He was probably under a false impression at the moment he said that, Amos. Custer's standard routine was always the impetuously aggressive cavalry attack without delay...the glorious charge. It generally paid off handsomely for him...until Little Big Horn. That time he significantly underestimated the size, preparedness, and effectiveness of the opposition he was facing.

Such mistakes in battle have been made more than a few times by American Indians too, for much the same reason: an excess of pride and self-confidence.

The reason Custer is universally despised nowadays is simple: he lost the battle. It's handy for Indians to despise him as a defeated symbol of all the Whites who oppressed them. It's handy for the Whites to despise him in order to expiate what they may see as the shared guilt of the White conquerors...or just because he lost, and he therefore has to be seen as some kind of a "bad guy" in order to make it okay that he lost.

He turns out to be very convenient for both sides, in fact. He's a perfect scapegoat for their darkest emotions to fix upon.

(And then too, there are some Whites who have seen him as a tragic hero. That also works if you want to cast him in such a role.)

I see him as none of the above. He was ambitious and reckless, yes, but so were many other officers. He made a bad decision. So have many others. In the end, he just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. It could have happened to someone else, but it happened to him, so he gets to carry the symbolic load and serve as everyone's whipping boy, rather like a modern day Judas Iscariot.

Perhaps he gets a good laugh over it now if he is watching from Spirit...