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I find it hard not to think of christology when I read the concluding paragraphs of Utley's Custer: Cavalier in Buckskin. Granted the many important differences between the two cases, there are also striking convergences -- as convergences—as is clear from the following:

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"Contradictions also mark, and are probably in part responsible for, the range of emotions he aroused in those who knew him. Among them he inspired either deep devotion or bitter hatred but rarely indifference. Men agreed on his courage, stamina, flamboyance, dash, and luck -- luck—'Custer's Luck' was a byword in the army for thirteen years. On little else could they agree.

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"If the patterns represent reality, moreover, they hold important implications for Custer's character. They convict him of brazen hypocrisy. On the one hand, he posed before the "vorld world as a man of honor and integrity. On the other, he engaged in unethical, dishonest, or even unlawful schemes to defraud the government and the public. And unless Libbie knew of and excused his infidelities, even his marriage was hypocritical.

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"Of the real General Custer all that is mortal rests beneath a monument on the heights above the Hudson River where young Autie was first introduced to the profession of the soldier. This profession he embraced with the passion of a zealot. He loved war, but more especially he loved the laurels that it brought. 'In years long numbered with the past, when I was merging upon manhood,' he wrote in 1867, 'my every thought was ambitious -- not ambitious—not to be wealthy, not to be learned, but to be great. I desired to link my name with acts and men, and in such manner as to be a mark of honor, not only to the present but to future generations.'

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