“Papers report disaster to Custer.  Secretary and General absent. Telegraph here as well as to Genl. Sheridan, any report you may receive.”
Telegram from Adjutant General of the U.S. Army, Washington, DC, to Assistant Adjutant General in Chicago, Asking for Reports on Custer’s Fate, 7/6/1876
Series: Letters Received, 1805 - 1889. Record Group 94: Records of the Adjutant General’s Office, 1762 - 1984
Before Army headquarters in Washington, DC, had received any official report on the battle, newspapers reported on July 6 that Custer had suffered some “disaster.” Adjutant General E.D. Townsend sent this telegram to Chicago to obtain official information on the action.
Lt. Colonel George Armstrong Custer and nearly half the soldiers under his command in the 7th Cavalry were wiped out by combined Cheyenne, Lakota and Arapaho forces during the Battle of Little Bighorn, also known as the Battle of the Greasy Grass, and Custer’s Last Stand, on June 25-26, 1876.
Two days after the battle, General Terry, Custer’s commanding officer, confirmed Custer’s fate and had it sent to Fort Ellis, the nearest telegraph office, where it was relayed first to Chicago, then to Army headquarters in Washington, DC. There was a break in the telegraph line between Fort Ellis and Chicago causing a delay in service, and so, the highest officials in the U.S. Army in Philadelphia attending the grand Centennial Exposition, learned about Custer’s fate – not from Terry’s report – but from a July 6 newspaper story.
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