Lee and Custer's mistakes...why we can't 'go there'

You're just upset you didn't get a chance to write the teleplay. With you at the helm perfection would be the byword.

Sacred cows make delicious hamburgers.

>>>"and after reading dozens and dozens of books about both men and their battles, etc. I can tell you we are no closer to understanding WHY both men did it.<<<"

With all due respect, I bet I've read just as much as you have, and I personally studied at Gettysburg for four years. Used to go out to the battlefield on nearly a daily basis. I've also been to Little Bighorn twice.

I really don't think it's that hard to understand the "why" in either instance, to be perfectly frank, and I think historians have done well to explain each respective situation.

Lee won most of his battles with less troops then the Union's Army Of The Potomac had. Lee had a much better shot at Gettyburg then Custer had at The Little Big Horn. If Lee had Stonewall Jackson at Gettysburg, Jackson would have taken Culp's Hill by nightfall on the first day and Meede's "fish hook shaped" line would have collapsed at the north end, and Meade would have likely retreated. They almost took Culp's Hill at the end of the first day even without Jackson and with his less aggressive successor. Lee still had a chance on the third day if his calvary had prevailed and split the Union middle from the east. Ironically it was Custer's calvary that prevented the Confedetate calvary under J.E.B. Stuart from doing this by defeating them before they reached the middle of the Union line. Lee's master plan was for Pickett's men to split the Union middle from the west and the Confederate calvary under Stuart from doing the same from the east. The movie Gettysburg failed to show any of the Confederate calvary actions on the third day.

As an unproduced screenwriter who's written several Westerns, I have to broadly agree with SCmovieprof.

Engaging movies have to have clear conflicts (internal/interpersonal/social), a coherent sequence of events (qv Aristotle), characters we can understand (whether or not we like them), etc, etc, etc. Achieving these things can require rewriting history.

Plausible dialog is a major problem. I had no trouble writing a letter from a jilted bride (ca 1880) that was probably fairly close to the style of that era. But how people wrote is no proof of how they spoke. (I suspect Samuel Clemens' writing is not far removed from the speech of the educated middle-class.)

What is particularly annoying is the use of modern words and current usage that is patently non-historical. For example, in the wretched Klondike, the writers show no awareness of when particular figures of speech came into use. ("I never thought the first day of the rest of my life would be so bad.") The low point of their ignorance comes when Bill tells the Mountie "You're incentivizing killers!". (!!!)

I might not be a great writer, but at least I have the OED next to my desk. It gives a pretty good idea of when a word came into common usage. Is it too much to expect a scriptwriter to own the OED, and use it?

The TIME-LIFE book The Indians (pub 1972, rev 1975) ends its discussion of the Battle of the Little Big Horn with this interpretation:

"Perhaps the clearest meaning of the battle was that the Plains Indian still had his dignity and would fight for his freedom. He would lose the war, but he could still win a battle -- especially this one. The white commander's big mistake was in not understanding this. By his acts Custer had asserted: I will meet you on your own terms, I will give you numerical odds and I will beat you. He had the option of bringing along Gatling guns and additional cavalry, but did not. He might have waited a day for other troops to come up, but he did not. He challenged on the basis of manliness as he knew it, of bravery, of horsemanship, of fighting spirit, of complete, blind devotion to one's cause. On that fateful Sunday, June 25, 1876, Custer renounced the advantages of his white background and in doing so he meant to leave the Indians nothing."

The book also offers these quotes from his autobiography (My Life on the Plains):

"If I were an Indian, I often think I would greatly prefer to cast my lot among those of my people who adhered to the free open plains, rather than submit to the confined limits of a reservation, there to be the recipients of civilization, with its vices thrown in without stint or measure."

"Stripped of the beautiful romance with which we have been so long wiling to envelop him, the Indian forfeits his [sic] claim to the appellation of the "'noble' red man." We see him as he is, a "savage" in every sense of the word; not worse, perhaps, than his white brother would be similarly born and bred, but one whose cruel and ferocious nature exceeds that of any wild beast of the desert."

"When the soil which he has claimed and hunted over for sol long a time is demanded by this to him insatiable monster [civilization], there is no appeal; he must yield, or it will roll mercilessly over him, destroying as it advances. Destiny seems to have so willed it, and the world nods its approval."