Philip Henry Sheridan, George Armstrong Custer, George A. Forsyth, Morris Joseph Asch, Nelson B. Sweitzer, Michael Vincent Sheridan and James Forsyth

Philip H. Sheridan (1831–1888) was a lifelong soldier from his West Point graduation in 1853 until just before his death. His leadership capabilities came to the fore in the last year of the Civil War, when he took command of the Union cavalry in Virginia and made it an effective fighting arm of the U.S. Army. With the return of peace, Sheridan was assigned commands in Texas, patrolling the border with Mexico, and in Louisiana, enforcing Reconstruction policies that protected voting rights, especially for blacks. The Indian Wars in the West occupied Sheridan for most of the 1870s, especially the Great Sioux War of 1876–77, in which George A. Custer and some 200 cavalrymen were killed at the Battle of Little Big Horn. Custer is seen in this photograph—taken in Topeka, Kansas, in 1872—wearing a fur-trimmed coat and sitting beside Sheridan.