George Armstrong Custer Equestrian Monument

The George Armstrong Custer Equestrian Monument, also known as Sighting the Enemy, is an equestrian statue of General George Armstrong Custer by Edward Clark Potter, located in Monroe, Michigan. The statue was unveiled on June 4, 1910 by President William Howard Taft and the widowed Elizabeth Custer. It was designated as a Michigan Historic Site on June 15, 1992 and was listed on the National Register of Historic Places on December 9, 1994. While Custer was not born in Monroe, he lived much of his early childhood there with relatives and attended the schools in Monroe. During his youth, he met his future wife Elizabeth Bacon, whom he returned to marry in 1864. Custer left Monroe to attend the United States Military Academy and fight in the Civil War. Because of his hard work and success during the war — as well as the Union's need for officers — he was promoted to the rank of Major General and became a very well-known military figure. After the Civil War, he fought in the Indian Wars in the West. His previous accomplishments in the Civil War, however, were overshadowed by his catastrophic defeat and death at the Battle of the Little Big Horn on June 25, 1876. To honor him, a $24,000, 14-foot (4.27 m) bronze equestrian statue, sculpted by Edward Clark Potter, was unveiled in Monroe in 1910 by President William Howard Taft and the widowed Elizabeth Bacon Custer. The statue commemorates his successful actions during the Civil War and not his more well-known defeat in 1876.