Middle-class Reform
During the last quarter of the nineteenth century, middle-class women all over the United States formed organizations that challenged the sexual double standard, and campaigned for suffrage, temperance, advancement of education, improved care of the mentally ill, and many other social, political, and economic causes. These organizations were important in shaping American urban life. Army women in frontier posts were isolated from these activities, and were reluctant to form organizations that would be severed when the regiment was re-assigned. A few women, however, found opportunities to assert an interest in reform. Alice Grierson favored women's right to vote and an equitable relationship between husband and wife. It is not known whether her activities expanded beyond her letters to her husband, and it is not likely that a commanding officer's wife would act publicly on a topic as controversial as suffrage. (Leckie, note, pp. 59–60) Linda Slaughter eventually became a suffragist, (though the term does not appear in her memoir) long after her husband resigned from the Army, but during her years at Fort Rice and nearby Camp Hancock, her struggles with questions of women's rights usually resulted in her acquiescence to wifely subordination.
Army women were more successful engaging education as a reform issue. During her lengthy journey across the Southern Plains with her husband's regiment, Evie Alexander "began teaching Jacob, Andrew's 'brevet bugler,' to read." Jacob, only fourteen, was probably an African American child because Andrew Alexander was an officer of "colored troops." Evie found Jacob to be a "smart boy." In educating him, she was acting on her belief that education was a path to a better life for former slaves. (Alexander, p. 49)
In the Custer household, Armstrong undertook the education of "the two young housemaids" at the request of their families and with Libbie's approval. Armstrong had been a teacher before the Civil War and "had the patience to teach them" which Libbie apparently lacked. However, it is doubtful that their education was extensive because of Colonel Custer's duties and the Custers' vigorous social life. Nevertheless, by mentioning this minor event in her memoir of life at Fort Abraham Lincoln, Libbie appropriated an important concern of middle-class women for herself and her husband. (Custer, Boots and Saddles, p. 106)
Frances Roe and other officers' wives organized hymn singing and prayer services for officers' families and enlisted men when no chaplain was regularly available. Roe was certain that her musical ability did not meet that of the men in her choir, but her willingness to lead the choir and organize rehearsals helped to keep the men engaged in cultural activities rather than the gambling and drinking that often occupied enlisted men. (Roe, p. 338)
Officers' wives comments about the excessive drinking that characterized most frontier posts were limited to private conversations with their husbands. Gossip about drunkenness to the extent of being unable to report for duty could be devastating to a man's career. Jennie Barnitz and Libbie Custer both secured promises from their husbands to abstain from alcohol, and Albert Barnitz also reluctantly gave up tobacco. However, there is no record that Army women worked together to manage alcohol consumption at military posts. Indeed, many Army women drank socially or served wine or champagne at garrison social events.
