Beyond the Custers: Exploring the Neill-Cochran House Photo
Contents
- Introduction
- Custer
- The Texas Blind Asylum
- Libbie Custer
- Austin During Reconstruction
- Eliza
- What the Photo Does Not Tell Us
- Acknowledgments
Introduction
This photo sits in a small frame at the Neill-Cochran House Museum in central Austin. It was taken in late 1865 or early 1866, when General George Armstrong Custer and his wife, Elizabeth (Libbie) Custer were stationed with the Union Army in Austin, Texas. What were they doing in Texas? What was Austin like just months after the end of the Civil War? Most importantly, what can we learn by investigating this photograph—and how can we move beyond the Custers themselves to learn more about the perspectives of other people in the photo? In the following pages, we will dive into the people and places represented here, exploring how to get meaning out of this historical photo, and why it is relevant today.
Custer
If you were to find this photograph in a book or archive, the caption would likely say something like:
General George Armstrong Custer and others on the steps of the Texas Blind Asylum, c. 1865.
This photo is well known, in other words, because of Custer. Because he was (and is) a national figure, we have a lot of information about him—in some ways, he represents the easiest way “into” the photograph.
George Armstrong Custer is famous for dying at the Battle of the Little Bighorn in 1876, in a battle popularly known as “Custer’s Last Stand.” But he first became a national figure during the Civil War. Almost expelled from West Point for playing pranks on other students, Custer graduated last in his class in 1861 and went straight into the army. There, he rose quickly through the ranks. Known for his aggressive style during attacks, Custer caught the attention of important American generals, including Major Generals George McClellan and Alfred Pleasanton. It was the latter who promoted him to Brigadier General, even though Custer had little experience at the age of twenty-three.
Custer fought successfully at Gettysburg and other major battles in 1863 and 1864. He helped defend Washington, D.C. from Confederate attack in 1864; in 1865, he pursued Robert E. Lee as the Confederate general retreated to Appomattox, where he officially surrendered.
Right after the War officially ended, Custer was sent to Texas to help maintain order, enforce the Emancipation Proclam
ation, and provide American presence close to Mexico, where there was political turmoil under French occupation. Why were Union troops necessary in Texas? Even though the war had officially ended by late April, the Trans-Mississippi Department—the part of the Confederacy that included Texas—did not surrender to Union troops until a month after the rest of the Confederacy. General Kirby-Smith, the head of the last organized army of the Confederate States of America, surrendered in New Orleans on May 26, 1865. This was a time of great upheaval in Southern society; one historian explains that after the surrender, “all authority inside Texas collapsed. The state was swept by chaos and anarchy. For the next three weeks, until the arrival of the first Union forces, dejected Texas troops roamed the countryside.” In response to the volatile situation, the victorious Union generals decided to send troops to Texas to stabilize the area.
The first Union troops arrived in Texas in June 1865; the first troops to reach Austin arrived on July 25. Custer arrived with thousands of troops slightly later, in November, after a long march from Alexandria, Louisiana. The troops camped just outside Austin on Shoal Creek. The Provisional Governor of Texas, Andrew Jackson Hamilton, provided the Texas Blind Asylum to Custer and his wife as a temporary home. The Asylum also served as the Union Army’s headquarters for the duration of the Custers’ three-month stay.
We know, then, that Custer is in this photo because he was sent to Austin to create stability and supervise the return of Texas to the United States. What can we learn from looking at the photograph itself? The composition of the photo emphasizes Custer. While he is not sitting directly in the center, he is framed by the darkness of the doorway. We know it is Custer because of his distinctive handlebar mustache. He looks confident and assured, his left elbow perched on his left thigh. At the same time, his uniform does not distinguish him from the other soldiers in the picture. While Custer stands out, in other words, it is still a group photograph. He is only part of the story.
But let us go back to our imaginary caption: General George Armstrong Custer and others on the steps of the Texas Blind Asylum, c. 1865. Besides Custer, what is the other significant detail mentioned in the caption? The location: the Texas Blind Asylum.
The Texas Blind Asylum
One of the most compelling things about the place where this photo was taken is that the building still exists. It is now called the Arno Nowotny Building, and is owned by the University of Texas; it houses the offices of the Center for American History. Besides its incongruous fit with the neighboring Frank Erwin Center, the building looks remarkably unchanged from the day this photograph was taken. How can the Texas Blind Asylum shed light on the story of the photograph? What sort of background and context does it provide?
The Texas Blind Asylum was established in 1856 as the first school for Anglo-American blind children in Austin. At first, the school operated out of the Neill-Cochran House while a more permanent building was being constructed. This new building was completed a few years later near Red River and 19th Street. At the time, this location was in the northwestern suburbs of Austin. While the Asylum was originally planned as a school and workplace for blind Anglo-American Austin residents, the school was not operational during the Civil War. The Blind Asylum moved to a newly constructed building near 49th Street and Lamar in 1916-17. At around the same time, the name of the school was changed to the Texas School for the Blind. After the School for the Blind moved, the building was used as a military school, a dormitory, and an office building.
After Custer’s stay at the Texas Blind Asylum in 1865-66, the building was popularly designated the “Custer Headquarters building” or the “Custer House.” His three-month stay at the building, in fact, is what eventually saved it—again, we are back to our main character in the photograph. In 1974, the University of Texas decided to raze the building to make room for a parking lot. Custer historians, students, and community members protested, and their efforts saved the building in 1977. During the struggle to save the structure, some people protested that the building was only commemorated because of its Custer history, despite its importance as one of the first facilities for the disabled in Austin—albeit only the White disabled
The Blind Asylum provides a grand backdrop for the photo, with its sweeping porch and stately columns. Libbie Custer, the General’s wife (we will get to her in a moment), was pleased about their temporary home—it was a big building for its day, with “room enough for all the staff, and a long saloon parlor and dining-room,” as well as two pianos. It was exceedingly comfortable, located on a large tract of land, and fit for entertaining.
In some ways, then, this photo represents a luxurious moment, with Custer and his entourage spread across the broad porch of an expensive home. But it also has a quotidian air about it. The Blind Asylum was where Custer conducted his daily business, where Libbie planned her dinner parties, where they and their friends and staff spent the bulk of their time. It not only represents luxury, it represents home. As we go deeper, we will see that this photo is in many ways a family portrait—how apt, then, for the motley Custer family to be gathered on the front stoop.
What about the woman seated next to Custer? She is dressed much more finely than the other women in the photograph, with a sumptuous skirt and an ornament in her hair. Her placement next to Custer, moreover, indicates she is a central character here. As you may have guessed, this is Elizabeth Custer, known to her friends and family as Libbie.
Libbie Custer
We know that Custer was in Texas with the Army—so it makes sense to ask why Libbie is in this picture. What was she doing in Austin? Was it normal for Army wives to follow their husbands into war zones?
As it happens, it was not. Libbie was unusual among her peers in her dedication to traveling with her husband, enduring wartime conditions and the harsh schedule of military life. But she wanted to be with General Custer; speaking of the trip to Texas, she later wrote, “I was indifferent to the points of the compass, so long as I was not left behind.” The Custers, married during the war in early 1864, had never been able to spend much peaceful time together. Even their honeymoon was cut short when Custer was ordered to rejoin his brigade in Virginia.
Libbie later published three books describing her travels with General Custer. In Tenting on the Plains, her account of the Texas campaign, Libbie’s writing conveys a sense of restfulness and relaxation during her time in Austin. She describes dinner parties and dances, horse and hound racing, as well as other upper-class leisure activities. Upon reflection, it makes sense that her time in Austin would have been rather idyllic: this was her first chance to live with her husband without moving around. She suddenly had a lively household to run, and a relatively normal, everyday schedule for the first time since her marriage over a year before.
Libbie also describes a feeling of relief that Austinites, in general, did not think of the Union troops as hostile newcomers. She notes that given the “demoralized” state of Texas, “it was certainly agreeable to us that we were not looked upon as invaders.” In a letter to her father, she continues, “You see, we were welcomed instead of dreaded, as, Yankees or no Yankees, a man’s life is just as good, preserved by a Federal soldier as by a Confederate, and everybody seems to be in a terrified state in this lawless land.” Her remarks here allude to the broader situation in Texas in late 1865, a situation that will come into better focus as we continue.
While she remarks on the general status of post-war Texas, she seems most concerned with recounting the details of her newly “normal” life. She says, “The regular troops arriving brought their wives and daughters, and it was a great addition, as we had constant entertainments, in which the civilians, so long cut off from all gayety, were glad to participate.” In her writing she also remarks on the well-dressed Austin women, whose gowns were “embroidered and trimmed richly with lace”—a luxury few could afford during times of war, and a surprise to Libbie in such an “isolated State.”
It seems difficult to reconcile the slightly petulant-looking young lady in the photograph with these lively and graceful recollections of a young Army wife. But it is important because it humanizes the photograph for us as modern viewers. The figures in the photo appear slightly stiff. Everyone seems to look in a different direction, making the photo seem more like a collection of random individuals than a group posing for a portrait. Only half of the assembled people look directly at the camera. The effect for modern viewers is to weaken the acknowledgment of the photographer; it is hard, in some ways, to recognize this captured image as a distinct moment in time. But as we dive into the background of the people in the photo, we can engage with them. Libbie, after all, was an intrepid young lady, even by today’s standards. Looking at the photograph with this in mind, she seems more confident. The ribbon is perched at such a jaunty angle in her hair, for example, and can we detect the hint of a smile on her face?
We know about George and Libbie Custer now, and a little bit about their life in Austin. Before we delve into the identities of other people in the photo, another question begs our attention: Beyond Libbie’s dances and dinners, what was Austin like when the Custers arrived?
Austin During Reconstruction
To call 1865 a tumultuous year in Texas would be an understatement. The Custers settled in Austin about seven months after Lee’s surrender at Appomattox on April 9, 1865. Just five days later, on April 14, 1865, Abraham Lincoln was assassinated. But many Texans held out hope for the Confederacy: on April 27, Texas Governor Pendleton Murrah urged Texans to support the Confederate Army. A local historian quotes him as saying, “Rally around the battle-scarred flag of the Confederacy, and uphold your state government in its purity and integrity—there is no other hope for safety to you and yours!”
This was not to happen. As word of Kirby-Smith’s likely surrender spread, soldiers left the Confederate army, taking their guns and ammunition and raiding the countryside for food and money. Considerable numbers of Confederate soldiers began to arrive in Austin by June. By all reports, these were weeks of chaos. On June 11, the State Treasury in Austin was raided, and thieves made off with thousands of dollars of state money. Most newspapers in Austin had stopped printing by the end of the war due to shortages of paper, ink, and patronage, meaning communication was slow and unreliable.
On June 19, 1865, Gordon Granger, the new Union commander of the Department of Texas, arrived in Galveston and read the Emancipation Proclamation, freeing over 200,000 enslaved people in Texas—almost three years after the Proclamation was first issued by President Lincoln. As for Governor Murrah, shortly after it became clear that Union troops would be sent to Texas, he fled to Mexico with other Confederate leaders. Texas was left with a crippled state government and a dramatically altered population, including hundreds of thousands of new freedpeople. This was large-scale social change, and Texans were left to negotiate it largely on their own. The Provisional Governor appointed by the President, for example, did not arrive in Texas until late July; he would not reach Austin until August.
Why such chaos? Texas was so far removed from the East Coast that the Civil War was a very different experience for many Texans. While Texans fought for the Confederacy, Texas was never invaded by Union troops and thus avoided the large-scale destruction suffered in states like Virginia. Historian Carl Moneyhon notes that while Union troops occupied Galveston in 1862 and moved along the Gulf Coast in 1864, “most Texans never saw a Union soldier until US troops began to arrive following the surrender.” Economically, in fact, ranching and cotton production remained quite profitable throughout the war. In some ways, then, the Civil War did not affect day-to-day life for most Texans, and antebellum culture went relatively unchallenged. Perhaps Libbie puts it best: of her husband’s mission to Texas, she says, “All I knew was, that Texas, having been so outside of the limit where the armies marched and fought, was unhappily unaware that the war was over, and continued a career of bushwhacking and lawlessness.”
It was after the war that widespread changes were enforced. White Texans believed that the end of slavery threatened the state economy as well as the social order. Many planters were doubtful they could make a profit without the free labor of enslaved people. At the most basic level, when enslaved people were freed in Texas on June 19, 1865, there was widespread panic among planters. Who would harvest the spring cotton crop, already in the ground? Rumors abounded that the Emancipation Proclamation was a temporary wartime measure. Many slave owners in Texas refused to free the people they considered property, while many planters who did free their enslaved people sought continued economic domination through sharecropping.
By late 1865, life in Texas was being rapidly reconfigured. The Custers arrived near the beginning of this process, when slavery was ending in fits and starts across the state and a new government was being patched together. To Libbie, Texas seemed a lawless place, which makes some sense given the massive changes and lack of governmental control in most parts of the state. Still, Libbie was not impressed. She says, “Something awful is constantly occurring among the citizens. [Texas] is a lawless country . . . . It is a common occurrence to shoot down men here for any offense whatever.”
For the Custers, however, Austin was largely a carefree and social place. Libbie had an active social life, and both Custers participated in horse and dog racing as well as “hops,” or balls. General Custer spent many afternoons at the School for the Deaf, where he seems to have enjoyed the children’s company, and Libbie goes into great detail in her later books describing the dinner parties she gave. Other upper class Austinites enjoyed active social lives that year as well. The fourth of July was celebrated in Austin for the first time in five years, for instance. And in August, a ball was given to celebrate the arrival of Provisional Governor Hamilton. Historian Frank Brown notes, “About the middle of September, the officers of the 1st Louisiana Cavalry at Austin, tendered a public ball and supper to the ladies of this city, which came off with much good feeling. A number of leading citizens returned the compliment shortly thereafter, by inviting the officers to another ball and supper, which proved to be equally pleasurable to all concerned.”
Dinner parties, balls, horse racing: in some ways, this seems odd given the tumultuous and unpredictable social and political climate. In other ways, it emphasizes the way that people strive to maintain a normal life even during times of upheaval. It is important to remember, though, that the Custers, as upper class Anglo-Americans, had the status and resources to maintain an active social life. As we will see in the following pages, this was not the norm for everyone. Life for many African Americans during this period was quite different, full of peril and possibility.
A look into the social complexity of Austin in 1865 adds important context to the photograph, giving us a glimpse into the daily lives and concerns of some of the people pictured. But it also raises another question: how was Austin experienced by people other than the Custers? In particular, how was it experienced by minorities, members of other classes, and other ethnicities? We can access at least one point of view by investigating the African American woman standing behind Libbie. Who is she, and what might her experience in Austin have been like?
Eliza
The African American woman standing behind Libbie is dressed differently than the other women, in a
dark dress with a white collar. She leans against the doorway and looks directly at the camera, but her expression is difficult to read: is she comfortable and relaxed, or tense, set apart from the group? Her name is Eliza, and she was an important part of the extended Custer family.
From later interviews, we know that Eliza was born into slavery on a plantation in Virginia. Eliza met General Custer after hearing the Emancipation Proclamation and walking away from the plantation where she was enslaved. “Everybody was excited over freedom,” she later told Libbie, “and I wanted to see how it was. Everybody keeps asking me why I left. I can’t see why they can’t recollect what war was for, and that we was all bound to try and see for ourselves how it was. After the ‘Mancipation, everybody was a-standin’ up for liberty, and I wasent [sic] goin’ to stay home when everybody else was a-goin’.” She went to a Union Army camp in Rappahannock County, near her former home, where she found work with General Custer. She is thought to have been around twenty-five or twenty-six when she began working for Custer in 1863. From that point on, Eliza was part of his camp, following him from battle to battle and—if we believe the apocryphal stories—often preparing dinner under artillery fire.
Most of our information about Eliza comes from later interviews with Libbie. This means that while we have anecdotal accounts of Eliza’s life in Austin, we know little about her own impressions of the place. Libbie notes that Eliza was popular, describing her as “a famous belle” who wore much nicer clothes than the other servants in camp. From Libbie’s account, the two women were close. Libbie describes how grateful she was for Eliza’s support throughout the long campaigns. Conversely, Eliza was relieved when Libbie joined General Custer’s retinue; Libbie quotes her as saying, “I was mighty glad when you cum [sic], Miss Libbie. Why, sometimes I never sot [sic] eyes on a woman for weeks at a time.” The two women, both quite young and unaccustomed to army life, must have taken some comfort in each other.
It’s hard to access Eliza from Libbie’s books, however, because Eliza’s words have been filtered through Libbie, who had free reign to edit and change. And while Libbie describes her old friend and employee with genuine affection, her account is fraught with overt racism. She is a source of information about Eliza, but a very biased one. Shirley Leckie, who wrote a biography of Libbie Custer, touches on this as well, noting that while Libbie “had given a remarkable woman her due” in her published descriptions of Eliza, she still “saw herself as her former servant’s uplifter.”
Thus while we see Eliza in the photo and know something about her from Libbie, she still remains something of a mystery. This presents a problem for the historian. What points of access do we have for people who left no written records of their own? We can tap into some of the currents of their experience through anecdotal information—but how can we overcome the “silences” of the archive?
What the photo does not tell us
This exploration of the Custer photo has given us a glimpse into the lives of George and Libbie Custer and an appreciation of the political and social climate of Austin in 1865. But what about the people in the photograph who did not leave extensive written records?
As modern-day viewers, we are left with questions about this photograph that cannot easily be answered. We know the identity, for instance, of a few other people in the photo. Custer’s brother, Tom, who was also in the army, sits just to the left of Custer; the man in the chair in the upper right is Custer’s father, Emmanuel Custer. Their presence makes this photograph compelling as a family portrait. But the identity of the other people in the photograph remains unknown. The two women in the upper left, and the men to the left in civilian attire are, at least for now, undocumented.
Not knowing their identity is a stumbling block that should be recognized, because it is not just about knowing their names, it is about knowing what their lives in Austin might have been like. Looking at the photograph, the group of people on the left conveys a sense of familiarity. Unlike the Custer group to the right, in which the people seem slightly separated, the people on the left seem to stress their inter-relatedness. The three men on the left are physically connected: the one in uniform sits quite close to the man in the middle, who rests a hand on the knee of the man on the left. Similarly, the standing woman on the upper left touches the shoulder of the seated woman in a gesture of comfortable familiarity. Were these people close—perhaps related, or good friends? Or did they wish to appear close for the photographer? We do not have answers to these questions, and we get the sense that we are missing a chunk of the story. We have seen how the photograph can be a record of a particular moment of history—but without additional information, it must be an incomplete one.
The photograph is also silent on the larger battles being waged in Texas in 1865-66. The Civil War may not have physically devastated Texas in the way it did other Southern states, but it left deep divisions that affected generations of Texans, and still affect us today. As Reconstruction began in 1865 and 1866, “Ex-Confederates . . . vented their hatred of anything symbolizing the North: Unionists, soldiers in blue, and ex-slaves, who desired to exercise their new freedoms.” In the meantime, White Texans sought to reaffirm their political, economic, and social dominance over other races by reestablishing antebellum conditions through legal channels. In 1866, the Texas Legislature produced the “Black Codes,” a series of laws designed to legalize discrimination and reestablish control over African American workers. These laws restricted the rights of African Americans, preventing them from voting, sharing the public school fund, or traveling without permission. Among other things, the codes “allowed local courts to arrest people whom they defined as idle, fine them, and contract their labor if they could not pay the fine.” Similarly, any African American sentenced to jail for a misdemeanor or petty offense could be forced into work by local authorities.
Many of these codes were invalidated by the head of the Freedmen’s Bureau, General Joseph A. Kiddoo, in 1867—but they are symptomatic of the enormous barriers and institutionalized racism that African Americans continued to face after gaining their freedom. After the Emancipation Proclamation was announced in Texas in June 1865, African Americans were left with few choices for how to support themselves and their families. Freedpeople were encouraged to stay put and continue working for wages. Many, however, chose a tenant farming or sharecropping arrangement because it seemed to offer greater independence and flexibility. But sharecropping became a cycle of “chronic indebtedness,” whereby tenant farmers owed so much to their landlords that they could never escape.
The Custers came to Austin as these changes were occurring, and topics like the Black Codes and tenant farming would surely have been a subject of conversation with local residents. As we have seen, the Custers were in Texas when huge numbers of people were confronting issues of race, struggling to find their place in a changing system. As we look at the photograph, it is important to think about its potential as a window into the past—but also its limitations. We have written records for the Custers and some of their friends and family, but many of the stories of people of other races and classes are inaccessible to us.
In questioning what the photo does and does not tell us, we gain a sense of its larger implications. The Custers and the other people in this photo may seem foreign to us in their pose and dress, but a look into this photograph reveals that they were negotiating many of the issues we continue to grapple with today. The photo is a compelling window into Austin in 1865—but it does not deal solely with the past. Instead, it invites us to question the way history and those in the past have dealt with issues of race and class, and to rethink how we approach these issues today.
Acknowledgments
“Beyond the Custers: Exploring the Neill-Cochran House Photo” is part of the Project in Interpreting the Texas Past, directed by Dr. Martha Norkunas. It was produced in the fall of 2008 for the graduate seminar, “Cultural Representations of the Past.” The exhibit was created and designed by Caitlin Earley, then a graduate student in the Department of Art and Art History at the University of Texas at Austin, and edited by Dr. Norkunas and Roger Gatchet. It is donated to the public domain and full permission is given to use the materials for nonprofit, educational purposes, given the individual permissions and restrictions that may apply to archival photographs and texts.
The Project in Interpreting the Texas Past (ITP) at the University of Texas at Austin was created by Dr. Martha Norkunas to shed new light on the Texas and American past by researching, interpreting and presenting the histories of women and minority communities. Students have engaged in historical and cultural research and in-depth oral history interviews to create innovative interpretive projects for historic sites, museums, and community organizations all over the state of Texas. For more information about the Project in Interpreting the Texas Past, please contact Dr. Martha Norkunas, Head of the Project in Interpreting the Texas Past, Department of Anthropology, EPS 1.130, University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX 78727; email m.norkunas@mail.utexas.edu.
ITP is an initiative of the Intellectual Entrepreneurship Consortium, created and directed by Dr. Richard Cherwitz, which is committed to building interdisciplinary, collaborative, and sustainable ways for universities to work with their communities to solve complex problems. For more information, please click here.