"If we wish to understand why Custer, Reno, Benteen, or any of the troop commanders did what they did, we must, in imagination, ride at their elbows and try to see what they saw at any given time and place, the nature of the terrain, what they knew or believed about the position and numbers of the enemy, the whereabouts of the different detachments of the regiment, and try to understand their doubts and perplexities resulting from insufficient information... I have sought to explain in a systematic way they why of the battle no so much by dint of quotation from the sources as by subjecting...