This unprecedented way of making appointments by one of the highest officials of the nation, was not confined in its discourtesy to the officers of the military posts in the West, but extended to Generals Sherman and Sheridan, and the department commanders as 'welL When an appointment was given to a post trader under the new regime, it was not, as before, forwarded through the regular military channels, but was sent at once direct to the commanding officer of the post where the trader was to locate, ignoring thereby the General and Lieutenant-General of the army, as well as the department commanders. Such open, bold, and highhanded discourtesy shown toward the general officer^ of the army, whose careerwas recorded as good in the minds of the American people, and who were known to be eminently conscientious and successful in the management of army matters under their control, and whose honor and fidelity to duty could not be questioned, of course had a demoralizing effect, and naturally caused a feeling of great distrust throughout the army toward this high official of the nation-Secretary Belknap. Even the rank and file of the army shared the feeling of discontent.
The private soldiers, when in their own club-room, known as " the soldiers' club-room," would at times say : " Well, boys, let's drink to ' old Bel;' he is not only Secretary of War, and the Supreme Boss over all of us, but the old coon is running the sutler stores too !"
At one of the posts, where Custer was placed in command, on the frontier, the post trader was one of the Belknap appointees, and after some months had passed, Custer, who was a very close-observing officer, and knew no other way than to do his duty faithfully, reported to the Secretary of War
that the trader in question was a man of intemperate and profligate habits, which fact had a demoralizing tendency among the young officers and private soldiers of the garrison.
The Secretary could not overlook nor pigeon-hole a communication of this nature and importance. The one thing he could not avoid doing to preserve outwardly the dignity and honor of his office, and that was to remove the trader. Custer had himself a record and influence that the War Office could not ignore, and with Custer's letter of information on record, the efforts of the venerable Simon Cameron, and the most influential men in Congress, were powerless to save the profligate trader whom he had denounced. He was removed and another trader was appointed to the post.
Custer had no preference in the matter of the post trader-ships, knowing he was likely to be ordered from one military post to another at any time ; but for the sake of the younger officers of the regiment, one of them his own brother, he desired that the example and opportunities of intemperance should not be furnished them in the store of the post trader.
Again months rolled on. Custer was engaged in making a private investigation in regard to some grain stolen from the Government warehouses. Before the end of his investigations was reached, a portion of the stolen grain was discovered in the warehouse of the post trader. Suffice this matter to rest here, by saying that Custer ordered the unfortunate trader off the reservation, on pain of arrest, which order was, of course, obeyed ; the trader leaving his partner to settle the business, and he never returned to that reservation while Custer was in command. Here it was that Custer showed a degree of leniency and warm-heartedness of which few people are aware ; and yet these were his characteristic qualities. He could have pursued the trader with criminal proceedings, had he so chosen. But he preferred to leave that duty to others, knowing that he had done his in ordering the trader off the military reservation, and feeling that humane considerations were not beneath the thoughts of any man, however great or powerful.
The reader will now readily perceive that in both cases against the traders, Custer had simply done his duty as an officer and a soldier, as his obligations to the service demanded that he should do. No other course, in honor, was open to him ; his duty unquestionably requiring him to perform it fearlessly, no matter what trouble or disappointment it might entail upon Secretary Belknap, who, in an unprecedented manner, had taken the tradership appointments in his own hands, and who was not the man to brook with equanimity the enforced displacement of two of his favorite post traders. Ten companies of troops usually wintered at this post, and the profits arising from the tradership business were not less than $15,000 or $20,000 per year. Hence arose the breach between the avaricious Belknap and the gallant* close-observing Custer, and it soon grew into a wide one. Custer was called to Washington by a Congressional Committee to testify in regard to the post tradership business. He exhausted all honorable means to avoid the summons of the Committee, but was compelled to obey their mandate. Custer's testimony, or rather the fact that he was called upon by the Committee, as probably conversant with the sales of post traderships, excited the ire of Belknap, and here it was that President Grant arrayed himself by the side' of Belknap against Custer. Belknap was a warm personal friend of the President's, and of his brother, Orville Grant, who will long live in the history of the Missouri River country as a successful speculator in the sale of frontier post traderships. Belknap was, moreover, a member of his cabinet, and Grant must needs sustain him-even had the family reputation not been involved through the speculative Orville.