Melani, your first post came in just about at the same time as mine so it's coincidence we both compared him to R.E. Lee. I agree with Lee's quote (but my books have him saying it at Fredericksburg, where his side won, which makes more sense!) but I think one has to understand war really well in order to hate it. (One of my personal heroes is Lewis Fry Richardson, a Quaker mathematician who hated war so much he spent his professional career studying it and the mathematical distribution of wars in time. . .)
back to Custer. the thread seems to say that a man can be gallant and brave in pursuit of a really stupid cause, and that Custer was personally brave and tactically stupid at the same time. IMHO his real crime was not just killing Indians but wasting the lives of the good soldiers (yes, I will say that) under his command, including Tom.