Alfred M. Rhett

Alfred Moore Rhett (October 18, 1829 – November 12, 1889) was a rice planter, a "volatile and controversial" Confederate artillery officer, victorious duelist, police chief, and the son of Fire-Eater Southern politician Robert Barnwell Rhett. Biography Rhett was educated at Harvard, class of 1850; in a letter to another son in 1847, Robert Rhett complained that Alfred "had spent excessively on clothing and had exhausted his allowance for the year." Upon graduation, Rhett became a rice planter in South Carolina. During the American Civil War he killed a West Point-educated relative of John C. Calhoun, William Ransom Calhoun, his commanding officer at the Charleston harbor fortifications, in a duel on September 5, 1862. John C. Calhoun had been his father's friend and political ally in Congress. The younger Calhoun's friends denounced Rhett in "unmeasured terms." Rhett was later "promoted to the office which his own good right hand had made vacant." According to the U.S. National Park Service, "At the end of June 1863, Fort Sumter was garrisoned with 5 companies (perhaps 500 men) of the 1st South Carolina Artillery, under the command of Col. Alfred Rhett. Its armament, meanwhile, had been reduced to 68 guns and mortars, many of the finest pieces having been removed to strengthen other fortifications about the harbor." Later in the war Rhett was taken prisoner. Captive Rhett was delivered to William T. Sherman on a rainy day when the Union Army had set up a command post in an old cooper's shop. Sherman described him as "a tall, slender, and handsome young man, dressed in the most approved rebel uniform, with high jackboots beautifully stitched, and...dreadfully mortified to find himself a prisoner in our hands." Rhett was invited to dine with Sherman and Frank Blair, and spoke freely throughout the meal. Henry Hitchcock described Rhett (who had been captured by scouts inside his own skirmish line, and whose interrogation Hitchcock observed) as a gentlemanly villain and "incarnate selfishness." Hitchcock was particularly astounded by Rhett confidently telling Sherman that he could easily raise 100,000 men in a month: