On June 25th 1876, a famous battle was fought. It's a battle known by many names,
the Lakota Sioux call it the Battle of the Greasy Grass, but many people know what is the Battle of
the Little Bighorn owing to its closeness to the Little Bighorn River, and still others know it
by the name of its most famous participant and refer to it simply as, Custer's Last Stand. It
is a little understood and controversial battle that is still argued and debated today. And one
of the most interesting personalities of that battle was the single verified,
and documented survivor of the force that followed George Custer into combat that day, a horse named
Comanche. Who was the mount of the 36 year old commander of Company I, Captain Myles Keogh. And
while the survival of his horse means that his name is relatively well remembered, the military
career of Myles Keogh is much less remembered. And that is too bad because he had an exceptional
military career that helps to illustrate exactly how severe the loss to the US Army was of those
men who died along the Little Bighorn River. It is history that deserves to be remembered.
Myles Keogh was one of 12 siblings born in Leighlinbridge, County Carlock Ireland in
March 1840. His father John Keogh was a gentleman farmer and they grew barley,
meaning they were not as powerfully affected as some by the poverty and starvation of the Great
Potato Famine that struck Ireland between 1845 and 1849. Still he was afflicted with
typhoid fever as a child, an illness often associated with poverty and the famine. Two
of his siblings died of the illness. Some have claimed that his father had been an officer
in the fifth Royal Irish Lancers, although there is no proof of that. He was however,
a restless youth and was said to be inspired by the novel, Charles O'Malley the Irish Dragoon,
a popular rollicking adventure novel about an Irishman fighting in the Napoleonic Wars.
In 1860 at the age of twenty, Myles Keogh was a young man looking for adventure, and there was
adventure to be had. Italy had been unified under the Roman Empire for some seven hundred years,
but after the fall the Empire had gradually developed into a system of disparate city-states,
with parts occasionally dominated by larger European empires. By the 19th century there
was a growing movement for unification of a single Italian state. But one obstacle was
the Papal States, a temporal kingdom under the direct sovereign rule of the Pope that dominated
a section of central Italy. Worldwide Catholics were weary of the Italian nationalists whom they
saw as a threat to the kingdom of the Pope. In 1860, Pope Pius the 9th sent a call throughout
Catholic Christendom for volunteers to protect the Papal States. The call was received with
particular enthusiasm in Ireland, where fourteen hundred volunteers traveled to Rome forming an
Irish battalion. Among those volunteers was Myles Keogh, who was given the rank of lieutenant.
1860 was a complex time in Italy during the chaotic period of struggle for unification
in Italy called the Risorgimento. The Papal States, whose army was rather small,
was sandwiched between competing elements. The Count of Cavour, the Prime Minister of
the Kingdom of Piedmont-Sardinia, was a leading figure in the Italian unification movement,
but he wanted unification under King Victor Emmanuel II of Sardinia. In the south,
a more radical revolutionary named Giuseppe Garibaldi had successfully invaded the Kingdom
of the Two Sicilies, and was planning to invade Naples. Cavour thus had two reasons
to invade the Papal States. First he wanted to prevent further foreign intervention,
and Austrian attempts to retake parts of the peninsula. And second, he needed to dominate the
unification movement in order to limit the power of its more radical elements. On September 11th
1860, the army of Sardinia invaded the Papal States with 35,000 men. The Papal States had
only 15,000 troops to oppose them. The Papal Army was commanded by a former French general
named Christophe De Lamoriciere. De Lamoriciere realized that the only hope for the Papal States
to resist the invasion was if a foreign power intervened, and so raced to the port of Ancona
the main Adriatic port still in papal hands, and the only reasonable place where a foreign power,
likely Austria, might be able to lend an army. De Lamoriciere was defeated in a lopsided field
battle, the Battle of Castelfidardo on September 18th. But Keogh and the Irishmen were in Ancona,
which was besieged by the Piemontaise Navy. De Lamoriciere managed to reach Ancona with
a few survivors of Castelfidardo but Ancona was surrounded. The bombardment by the Piemontaise
Navy and siege-train was fantastic, and despite desperate fighting, the garrison of Ancona was
obliged to surrender when naval bombardment caused the explosion of the magazine of the
Fort of Lanterna in the harbor. Keogh and his fellow Irishmen were captured, and quickly
paroled. Keogh had distinguished himself in the fight, and was awarded two medals for gallantry
by Pope Pius the ninth. The medal Pro Petri Sede, latin for Peter's chair, and the Order
of St. Gregory the Great. Myles Keogh’s medal Pro Petri Sede was sold at auction in 2006. Moreover
Keogh was offered a position as a lieutenant in the Order of Saint Patrick in the Papal Guards,
which would have been a secure position for the young Irishman. But by then he was disillusioned
with papal politics, and peacetime service did not excite him. But a new opportunity had arisen.
Many officers of the US Army had joined the Confederacy at the outbreak of the US Civil War,
and the Federal Army was rapidly expanding. There was a critical shortage of experienced
officers and the Lincoln administration sent John Hughes, the irish-american Bishop of New York,
to Europe to recruit experienced officers among the veterans of the Papal Wars.
For the second time in his young life, Myles Keogh, just 22 years old, was being offered a
foreign Commission and a chance for adventure. After a brief stop in Ireland he sailed with
two of his comrades from the Papal Army for the United States and its bloody war. Myles Keoghs’
service in the Civil War was nothing short of extraordinary. He served in more than 30 major
engagements, more than 80 engagements overall. Virtually every important engagement from 1862 on,
and he impressed every officer that he ran into. Major General Jacob Cox said of him,
“He was born a soldier.” Keogh and his two comrades were commissioned captains and assigned
to the staff of Brigadier General James Shields, who had been born in Ireland and immigrated to
America, and had served in the US Senate for both Illinois and Minnesota. At his first engagement,
the day before the Battle of Port Republic and the Shenandoah campaign, Keogh was with a detachment
under Colonel Samuel Carroll that surprised Confederate General Stonewall Jackson and
his staff in the town of Port Republic. Jackson only managed to escape because his horse, Little
Sorrel, had been saddled so that he could ride to church. Keogh was briefly on the staff of General
George McClellan at McClellan's request. McClellan said of him, “His record has been remarkable for
the short time he'd been in the Army.” After the Battle of Antietam, Keogh was next assigned
to the staff of Brigadier General John Buford, a veteran cavalryman, who described Keogh as,
“Dashing, gallant and daring.” Although a staff officer, Keogh never passed up an opportunity to
distinguish himself in battle. During the daring Stoneman's raid in 1863, his detachment captured
15 supply wagons. After the raid, Buford was provided command of the cavalry division where
he particularly lauded the performance of his staff, including Myles Keogh. Keogh then
accompanied Buford at the June 1863 Battle of Brandy Station, the largest predominantly
cavalry engagement of the US Civil War, and the battle in which the Union cavalry established
their reputation. And then again at the Battle of Upperville, another major cavalry engagement.
But Keogh most distinguished himself on July 1st 1863, at the start of the great Battle of
Gettysburg in what was perhaps the most important cavalry action of the Civil War. The first day of
Gettysburg was a testament to General John Buford, who realized before all others,
that his cavalry were facing the main force of the Army of Northern Virginia. His cavalry
division doggedly defended the high ground, three ridges west of the town, against a vastly superior
force. Realizing that it was the key to victory at the climactic battle that could literally
determine the outcome of the war. Outnumbered nearly three to one, Buford's division had long
enough for the Union infantry of the 1st Corps, under Major General John Reynolds to arrive. It
was a desperate delaying action. When Buford saw Reynolds' troops approaching he reportedly said,
“Now we can hold this place.” It was a defining moment, of the defining battle of the war. The
New York Times later said of John Buford, “He was considered the best field cavalry
commander in the service, and was noted for his coolness and judgment under fire.”
Myles Keogh distinguished himself in that desperate action and was rewarded with a brevet
promotion to Major, for gallant and meritorious service. Keogh continued with Buford's cavalry
through a number of small engagements pursuing Lee after Gettysburg, but the general's health
began to decline. Buford died, possibly of the same typhoid fever that Keogh had suffered from
in his youth, in December. It is a testament to the close relationship between the two
that Buford literally died in Keoghs arms. Keogh then served in the West where he was the aide of
General Stoneman. Keogh accompanies Stoneman on his daring 1864, behind the lines raid,
to free Union prisoners and was captured with the general at the Battle of Sunshine Church,
where both their horses were shot out from under them. After two months in captivity,
both were exchanged. Keogh wrote to his sister that the quick exchange likely saved his life,
as his health was failing. After recovering, he received another brevet promotion to Lieutenant
Colonel for gallantry during the Battle of Dallas at the end of May 1864. Stoneman said of Keogh,
“Major Keogh is one of the most superior young officers in the Army.” Stoneman's superior,
Major General John Scofield was just as ofuse in his phrase saying that, “Keogh was,
one of the most gallant and efficient young cavalry officers I have ever known.”
Keogh’s service during the Civil War was exemplary and by any standard, it deserved to be remembered.
But the young man, a lieutenant colonel at just the age of 24 at the end of the Civil War,
who had already fought in two wars, on two continents, still had one more war
to fight. After the war Keogh stayed with the army, and while a brevet lieutenant-colonel,
held the regular rank of captain and was made commander of Company I of the newly
constituted seventh United States Cavalry. Keogh saw extensive service in the Indian Wars where he
was frustrated by the unconventional warfare, and difficulty tracking Indians and bringing them to
battle. Like many frontier officers he sometimes drank too much. He was often on detached duty,
and missed the 1874 Black Hills Expedition because he was on an extended leave visiting
his home in Ireland, which he had inherited from his parents and which he deeded to his sister.
Keogh was the senior captain of Custer's five companies at the Battle of the Little Bighorn,
June 25th 1876. While the battle has been heavily studied, the details are still not clear as there
were no surviving witnesses of the companies that accompanied Custer into battle. Accounts
from their adversaries were taken years after the battle and contradict one another. It appears that
Keogh died in his own last stand, as his body was found among the cluster with two sergeants, the
bugler, and the standard-bearer of Company I. His horse, Comanche, was found alive and nursed back
to health. The horse had a wound matching a wound on Keogh’s leg that implied the Keogh had been
hit originally while mounted. Comanche's wounds were evidence of the fierceness of Keogh’s fight.
There is a little clear record about Myles Keogh’s relationship with his commander at the
Battle of the Little Bighorn, George Armstrong Custer. Some have argued that they were close,
but the record doesn't necessarily support that. And the fact is, is that the colorful
and bombastic George Custer was pretty much the opposite personality of Myles Keogh idol John
Buford. What is clear is that Myles Keogh was one of the most experienced cavalry officers
in the United States Army, and he deserved to be remembered for more than the strange
happenstance that his horse happened to survive the battle. His extraordinary
military career is a testament to the loss of experience that the US Army suffered with
the loss of so many officers and men at the Battle of the Little Bighorn. And his
military experience which spans three wars, on two continents deserves to be remembered.
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