Rufus Pettit: American Civil War Union Prison Inspector

Civil War Times  | 0 comments  |  Print This Post  |  Email This Post

Captain Dewitt James could hardly believe what he saw his superior doing that day in Washington Street Prison. ‘I made rounds with Captain Pettit,’ said James, commander of the Union prison. ‘Sergeant [Hiram] Belknap had a man tied up with hands behind his back. Captain Pettit criticized the sergeant for not pulling the chain tight enough. Pettit himself pulled the man’s wrists higher behind him and said, ‘Now, are you going to own up to what regiment you belong to?’

The man replied, ‘So help me God, Captain, I do not belong to any regiment.’ Pettit then kicked the man in the face and blood spilled on the floor. From the gray hair, the prisoner seemed to be quite an old man.’

Rufus D. Pettit, the superintendent of Union prisons in Alexandria, Virginia, was convinced the old man had deserted from the Union army, and he refused to ease up until he forced a confession. It may not have been the first time Pettit used violence on prisoners, and it apparently was not the last. Eventually, he was court-martialed for his cruelty, and by November 1865, his future lay in the hands of the military judges.

Before this time in Pettit’s life, there was no hint of the tyrant who came to light in the Alexandria prisons. Early in the war, he was a field officer, known as firm but fair, respected and loved by his men. In those days, he wrote tender love letters to his ‘Dear wife, Elvira.’ Then, suddenly, after his appointment as prison superintendent in July 1864, his personality turned dark.

Sudden as that change was, it may not have been surprising, considering his traumatic beginnings. Both of his parents died when he was only three years old. The responsibility for raising him fell to an aunt and uncle, who probably lived at the Pettit farm in Cold Springs, New York. There, he would have worked the farm with them at least until age 18, when he became an apprentice to architect Elijah Hayden, an ardent abolitionist.

In 1846, when Pettit was 22, the United States went to war with Mexico. Serving with Company A of the 1st New York Volunteers, he found he had a talent for soldiering. He showed skill and composure while fighting in eight battles, including those at Vera Cruz, Cerro Gordo, and Mexico City, where it was reported that his marksmanship knocked a Mexican flag from its pole. He was never wounded, but did return home with ‘chronic diarrhea,’ a condition that would trouble him for the rest of his life.

For the next 13 years, he worked on the family farm in Cold Springs. Then the Civil War broke out, and he decided to sign up for another stint in the army. Taking advantage of his military experience and the credibility it lent him, he recruited an army unit from among his friends and neighbors. It was originally called the Cold Springs Rifles before becoming Company B of the 1st New York Light Artillery, with Pettit as its captain. The unit’s first action was with Major General George B. McClellan and his Army of the Potomac on the Virginia Peninsula in mid-1862. During McClellan’s Peninsula Campaign, the battery fought at, among other places, Yorktown, Fair Oaks, Gaines’ Mill, and Malvern Hill.

At the campaign’s end the Army of the Potomac found itself at Harrison’s Landing, waiting idly as Abraham Lincoln repeatedly tried to prod McClellan into action. While there, Pettit suffered ‘fatigue, exposure and chronic diarrhea.’ These ailments would cut short his career as a field officer, but not before he fought at Fredericksburg and Chancellorsville in May 1863. From the former, he wrote home that civilian men fired their shotguns at retreating Union soldiers, while women and children pelted their blue coats with stones. He remarked that the entire city should have been burned to the ground and the streets plowed up. At Chancellorsville, Colonel Edward C. Cross of the 5th New Hampshire Infantry noted, ‘Sunday morning…Petit’s iron battery of ten-pound Parrott’s, all firing rapidly. In a few moments the enemy got a splendid rifle battery into position, which fired with wonderful accuracy. So heavy was the fire that Captain Petit was compelled for the first time during the war to limber up and leave–but was instantly ordered back.’

Tags: 19th Century, American Civil War, Civil War Times, Historical Conflicts, Historical Figures

You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a comment, or trackback from your own site.