Rosebud
An Excerpt from the current issue: Volume 31, #5
Rosebud Table of Contents
Sample Tour/Battle Map
Rosebud
Civil War Rivals George Crook and George Custer, and the Beginning of the Great Sioux War, 1876
by Robert F. O’Neill
Within a year of the surrender at Appomattox Court House, Va., nearly one million men had been mustered out of the volunteer ranks of the U. S. Army. In July 1866, President Andrew Johnson signed a measure limiting the new standing army to 54,302 officers and men. Over the next eight years the size of the army was reduced three more times, until it numbered just 30,000 enlisted men in 1874. And, in July 1870, Congress ordered that the grades of general and lieutenant general be abolished upon the retirement of William T. Sherman and Philip H. Sheridan. That bill also reduced the number of major generals to three and set the limit for brigadiers at six. Competition for these nine appointments, especially the brigadier positions, would be fierce, though the chance for promotion of any kind in the post-Civil War army would be depressingly low.
Blue & Gray Magazine 
