1882: Custer in Chains Read Free Page A

be dozing, she wondered why so many of her married friends felt uncomfortable with sex. Why did they feel that it was a chore to be endured instead of a pleasure to be savored? For all his faults, she immensely enjoyed having sex with him.
    Still, she wondered at his comment.
    “How can the President of the United States and master of all he surveys be bored?”
    “Because it’s a boring damn job, that’s why. Nothing has happened since I was elected, and nothing will. I also had that damn dream again. Once again I was lying on the ground with a bunch of Sioux standing there and laughing at me. Then one of them reaches down and starts scalping me.”
    She stroked his head. “And that’s when you awake, because it is only a dream.”
    His notoriety as the man who had subdued the Sioux, as a reporter named Kendrick had put it, had carried him all the way to the White House. He had been nominated as the Republican candidate for president, defeating the other Republican nominee, James Garfield, in the primaries. And later he had narrowly defeated former Civil War general and Democratic candidate, Winfield Scott Hancock, in the general election of 1880.
    Yet George, or Autie as his family had sometimes called him before his brothers were killed, was correct. He was serving at a time when not much was occurring in the United States. The Indians had been reduced to a minimal menace and there was peace in the land. Europe might be in turmoil with the Prussians trying to gobble it up, but those wars were far away. The Reconstruction Era of the south was over and those former Confederate states were now free to do whatever they wished. That this meant suffocating the desires of the newly freed Negroes was of no concern to him, or most other people for that matter.
    “Libbie, I am terribly afraid that my four, or, God forbid, eight years as president, will be as little more than a night watchman. I’ll become a footnote in history like some other presidents such as Fillmore or Pierce or my own predecessor, Rutherford B. Hayes. I need something exciting to fulfill me. I need to accomplish something important. I need to start a war.”
    Libbie sat up. Her nightgown was still above her waist and he grinned at the sight of her exposed body. “You can’t be ready again,” she chided him playfully as she saw his eyes widen. If he was indeed ready she would be as well. “Now, let’s talk about a war. Who would you want to fight? Clearly, it can’t be the Indians again.”
    She got up and walked barefoot across the bedroom. “Nor can it be the Mexicans. They’ve done nothing to provoke us and Congress will not let you just up and invade them. We did that once already. Somebody has to start the war and it can’t be the United States. The nation is still recovering from horrors of the Civil War.”
    Custer yawned. “And that also leaves out the nations of Central and South America. They’re all too helpless and too far away and besides, they’d never start anything against us.”
    “Agreed, George. Therefore, it must be a European power. However, we must choose carefully. Great Britain is out. Not only is she too powerful, but our economic ties with her are too close. War with Great Britain would be a total disaster. France is too powerful as well, although we very nearly did fight them at the end of the Civil War. They do hate us, so let’s keep them in mind for the future. But right now, they are too mighty. Their navy is second only to Britain’s.”
    George smiled at the memory. The French had backed a puppet emperor in Mexico—a pliant fool named Maximilian—and sent troops to support him in violation of America’s Monroe Doctrine. With the Civil War raging, Lincoln did nothing. After the war, an army under General Phil Sheridan was sent to the Rio Grande with the clear message that the French Army in Mexico had to leave. They did and poor Maximilian wound up in front of a firing squad while his mentally ill wife