Grant refused to accept that. In a newspaper interview, he placed blame for the disaster squarely on Custer's shoulders: I regard Custer's massacre as a sacrifice of troops, brought on by Custer himself, that was wholly unnecessary . . . He was not to have made the attack before effecting the junction with Terry and Gibbon. He was notified to meet them on the 26th, but instead of marching slowly, as his orders required in order to effect the junction on the 26th, he enters upon a forced march of eighty-three miles in twenty-four hours, and thus has to meet the Indians alone on the 25th