Rufus Pettit: American Civil War Union Prison Inspector

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On cross-examination, Pettit accused Bannister of asking for money from him in exchange for keeping his mouth shut about the incident. Bannister admitted that he had asked Pettit for money, but he said he was referring to $19 Pettit had stolen from him at the prison.

The prosecution called several other witnesses before submitting 15 sworn affidavits to the court. One of those written statements came from Dr. H.L. Pauli, who operated a drugstore at the corner of Prince and Fairfax streets in Alexandria. He described prisoners strung up so their toes barely touched the ground and mentioned that guards had orders to shoot prisoners who looked out windows.

William Metzger, who ran a bakery at 83 Prince Street, also turned in an affidavit. ‘I saw Captain Pettit knock down a sick man, and I saw a guard shoot a man who looked out the window,’ read the document. M.R. Blodgett saw Pettit put a ring through a man’s nose. ‘The Captain pulled him around, asking him to confess,’ Blodgett wrote. Dempster Hodge stated that he had written a letter of complaint to Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton about Pettit. Stanton forwarded the letter to Colonel Henry H. Wells, provost marshal general of Union defenses south of the Potomac. Wells replied that Pettit was ‘all right’ and that Hodge was ‘a liar.’

John Long of the 2d Pennsylvania Reserve Corps wrote that he was in jail when a guard shot and killed ‘an entirely quiet and inoffensive man, Samuel Thomas of the 88th Pennsylvania. When we asked Captain Pettit for a blanket to wrap the corpse, he told us to use our own blankets, knowing full well that we had no blankets. When Mrs. Thomas came seeking her husband, Captain Pettit joked, ‘Your husband has been released–in his coffin.”

William S. King of Boston, Massachusetts, described Pettit as ‘worthy of the Spanish Inquisition in its palmiest days,’ and ‘a murderous villain, as bad as [Henry] Wirz,’ commandant of the Confederacy’s Andersonville Prison. The 82d Pennsylvania Infantry’s John Miller, who had been a clerk in provost marshal Wells’s office, wrote that more than $3,000 [about a hundred thousand 1998 dollars] had been stolen from the prisoners during Pettit’s tenure as superintendent.

John Landers of James’ Independent Company of Pennsylvania Infantry (named for and commanded by Dewitt James), who worked at the Washington Street Military Prison for a time, recalled, ‘I’ve seen over 100 men strung up 12 hours in a row, often in freezing weather. Most would confess to anything after one night of this treatment.’ William Harmon, also from James’ Independent Company, stated that he saw Pettit ‘knock a man down when he denied being a deserter, and threw him out of a window. The men who were strung up were in agony, arms and hands swollen, begging for release. I have seen the Captain going along the street, shooting his revolver at prisoners looking out the window.’

Another member of the Pennsylvania unit, Sergeant Stacy Cogswell, wrote, ‘Captain Pettit constantly ordered men strung up. Their arms were swollen and their faces were purple, with bloodshot eyes and noses dripping blood, begging for relief. It made my heart sick to see such cruelty.’ He added that the men received no food during these ordeals.

The six other affidavits told the same stories. Several witnesses. Several sworn, written statements. All the same story. Things already did not look good for Pettit, and there was still one more witness to one more incident.

That last witness was Thomas Cumber of 71 St. Azaph’s Street, the victim in the last alleged incident. Cumber had never served in the army. When asked if he knew Pettit, Cumber replied, ‘Yes, sir, I know him very well, at least I do not know anything good about him. In September 1864, he arrested me at gun-point on my own pavement in front of my piazza, where I have kept a restaurant for the past six years. Captain Pettit said I was a deserter and when I denied it he hit me a dozen times in the face and then he broke my nose with his revolver. When I regained consciousness, I was in the Alexandria County Jail at the corner of Prince and St. Azaph’s. The jail is on one corner and my house and restaurant is on the other.’

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

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