Second Lt. George Armstrong Custer was not yet a legend when he marched up the Peninsula with the Army of the Potomac in the spring of 1862.
But even at 22, he was already showing a knack for putting himself into situations that helped build his reputation.
Rising from the fields in front of the Confederate fortifications that stretched from Mulberry Island to Yorktown, the young West Point graduate was among the first Union officers to ascend in the pioneering hot-air balloons used to survey and map the enemy’s positions.
He also played a stand-out role in the May 5, 1862 Battle of Williamsburg, guiding Brig. Gen. Winfield Scott Hancock’s brigade across a narrow mill dam on the extreme right flank of the Federal line to a position menacing the Confederate rear.
After the bloody assault that failed to dislodge Hancock from Redoubt #11, Custer joined many of the horrified but curious Union men picking through a killing field so thickly covered with fallen Southern soldiers that it was hard to avoid stepping on the dead and wounded. And as he made his way across that grim landscape, he discovered the bloodied form of a West Point classmate.
“People thought they were brothers,” says historian Carson Hudson, author of “Civil War Williamsburg,” describing how Custer picked up 5th N.C. Infantry Capt. John “Gimlet” W. Lea and carried him to a make-shift field hospital set up in a barn.
“It was very emotional.”
So concerned was the Union lieutenant for the treatment of his Confederate foe that Lea responded as best he could by writing and signing a message in Custer’s notebook.
“Wmsburg, 5-6-62,” he scrawled, “If ever Lt. Custer U.S.A. should be taken prisoner, I want him treated as well as he has treated me.”
Lea spent weeks recuperating at the Bassett Hall home of Williamsburg resident Col. Goodrich Durfey, where he was nursed by Durfey’s 17-year-old daughter, Margaret.
Within 2 months, the pair was engaged. And when Custer stopped by to see his friend after the Seven Day’s’ Battles near Richmond and the beaten Army of the Potomac’s return to Fort Monroe, the couple decided to move their marriage up by a week and marry the next evening with Custer standing up as Lea’s best man.
Both soldiers wore their full uniforms for the 9 p.m. Aug. 19 ceremony nearly 151 years ago, making a striking statement of friendship despite their clashing suits of gray and blue.
And so warmly received was the Yankee officer by his “secessionist” hosts that he stayed on in Williamsburg, spending every evening playing cards and listening to the Durfey girls sing and play Southern songs on the piano.
“I never had so pleasant a visit among strangers,” Custer wrote his sister after he returned to duty nearly 2 weeks later.
Look for my story on the Battle of Williamsburg and the clash at Redoubt #11 in the Daily Press on Sunday, Aug. 18.
— Mark St. John Erickson
