James Porter (7th Cavalry)
James Ezekiel Porter was one of General Custers eleven officers killed at the Battle of Little Bighorn, also known as Custers Last Stand, and Porter was among the first verified casualties of the historic battle alerting the world to the demise of Custers group. According to several historians, Porter led troops in a defensive action at the Little Bighorn. Porter also served in the American South during the Reconstruction Era, where, according to a comrade, he respectably served Ku Klux duty while the 7th Cavalry was charged with eradicating the Ku Klux Klan and illegal distilling.
James Ezekiel Porter was born in Strong, Maine, in 1846 to Jeremy W. Porter, a wood manufacturer and state senator and trustee of the state reform school. James Porter attended Bates College from 18621863 and then Norwich University from 18631864. Porter was then was appointed to the United States Military Academy at West Point by U.S. Representative Sidney Perham, and Porter graduated in 1869, ranked 16th in a class of 39. Porter and the other officers of the 7th Cavalry in the nineteenth century...often came from cultured backgrounds. Most officers in the Seventh Cavalry were educated at civilian colleges or the prestigious Military Academy at West Point and were part of a stratified class system existing between commissioned and enlisted status.
Source: Wikipedia