On June 25, 1876, over two hundred men serving under George Armstrong Custer were wiped out by a combined force of Lakota and Cheyenne warriors at the Battle of the Little Bighorn in present-day Montana. Custer’s Seventh Cavalry was part of a larger military operation intended to round up the remaining free Plains Indians and force them onto reservations. This larger force was led by General Alfred H. Terry, Commander of the Department of Dakota.
Terry was born in Hartford in 1827, attended Yale College, and was a lawyer in New Haven when the Civil War broke out. Terry immediately took to the field with the New Haven militia; he went on to raise a regiment of volunteers and served throughout the war, achieving the rank of major general of volunteers. His capture of Fort Fisher was considered one of the most brilliant exploits of the war. After the war, he was one of the few volunteer officers to remain in the army. He served in Georgia during reconstruction and helped to negotiate the Treaty of Fort Laramie, which ended the Red Cloud War in 1868.
On June 27, 1876, Terry and his troops arrived at the Little Bighorn and discovered the bodies of Custer and his men. News of the defeat shocked the nation, leading to immediate controversy over the cause of the defeat and speculation that Custer had either disobeyed or exceeded Terry’s orders.
Terry continued in command of the Department of Dakota until 1886, when he was advanced to full major general and placed in command of the Division of the Missouri, with headquarters in Chicago. He retired for disability in 1888, and returned home to New Haven, where he died in 1890, widely recognized as “an ideal soldier and gentleman” and “one of the most, gentle, kind, and brave characters that ever served his country.”