ABSTRACT
Historians who write about Custer and the Little Bighorn tend to emphasize that the battle was a tremendous campaign issue, while historians who focus on the presidential race tend to mention it only in passing or ignore it completely. The few historians of the election who mention the Little Bighorn do so generally as an illustration of current events in 1876. The majority of Little Bighorn historians agree that Custer did not plan to use the battle to get to the White House, but they do tend to emphasize the importance of the battle as a campaign issue. Character was important in the election because of the Grant administration scandals, one of which involved corruption in the Indian Bureau. The election was important to the Picayune, certainly more than it was for the Dispatch, which had noted that the campaign was boring and bad for business.
