Customer Reviews

The Benteen-Goldin Letters on Custer and His Last Battle

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This book is the printing with minimal commentary of letters between Goldin and Benteen. Frederick Benteen was an officer and Goldin an enlisted man in the Seventh Cavalry at the Battle of the Little Big Horn. Correspondence between officer and enlisted man is unique in itself. In the case of first hand participants their direct insights into events is always fascinating. This book does not answer any outstanding questions but it does add insights especially relative to Benteen. Anyone interested in the history of the Seventh Cavalry and the personality of Frederick Benteen, a major participant in the Little Big Horn scenario will be interested in this book.

The book should read to "Letters by Theo. Goldin" to and from various different people, E.A. Brinistool, Albert Johnson, Phillip Cole, Fred Dustin and eventually Capt Frederick Benteen. Most of the letters were written when Goldin was very old and blind. Interesting insight into Benteen and a scathing by Benteen of Custer and his preported "conduct". Worth the reading if you truely "understand" what happened on June 25th 1876. Not for the first time reader... you'll be lost within a matter of pages unless you understand the "who, what and where" of different people.

A must have book for all amateur scholars of the Little Bighorn battle and the 7th cavalry. Gives an insight into Captain Benteens' way of thinking about his life on the frontier, Indian wars and of course LBH. These thoughts came when the man was in the twilight of his life and at times is full of regrets and some bitterness, but rare is the old man who does not have these thoughts. His thoughts are on paper where most of us just talk about it or think silently about sometimes what went wrong in our careers, life and country. A new book about the man called Harvest of Bitter Regrets by Charles Mills comes out later this year and by the sounds of the reviews come closest to understanding Captain Benteen.