Long and notable was the career of Edmund Winston Pettus. Born two years after the admission of Alabama into the Union, he was practically identified with all the great periods which came into the history of the state. Entering life early, he shared in all the epochs from the early stages of statehood till his death at an advanced age.

In many respects, the career of General Pettus was a remarkable one. Left an orphan by the death of his father while yet an infant, General Pettus was reared by a careful and devoted mother. The best possible scholastic advantages then extant were given him, and he was able to lay the basis of a long and eventful career. His scholastic course was taken at Clinton College, Tennessee.

General Pettus was a man of solid qualities, both mentally and physically. He was six feet high, well proportioned, with broad, massive shoulders, a large head and a commanding presence. He began the practice of the law at twenty-eight, and, excepting the interregnum of his career as a soldier of the Confederacy, continued in the profession until he was elected to the National Senate from Alabama. In that capacity he was serving when he died, at the advanced age of eighty-four.

His career as a lawyer began at Gainesville, Sumter County, where he was first associated with Honorable Turner Reavis. His ability was promptly recognized, and soon after beginning to practice, he was elected district solicitor, and re-elected after the expiration of his term, but resigned in 1851, and removed to Carrollton, Pickens County, where he resumed private practice.

In 1853 Mr. Pettus was appointed by Governor Collier to fill a vacancy in the district solicitorship. Characteristically fair and just, he won great favor and popularity throughout west Alabama, so that when he offered for the judgeship of the circuit, in 1855, he was easily elected. This position he surrendered in 1858, in order to remove to Cahaba, then a thriving center of wealth and intelligence, where he practiced law till the opening of the war. During the early part of the year 1861, troops were rapidly raised and organized into regiments, and as rapidly as possible, sent to the front. In co-operation with Colonel Garratt of Perry County, Pettus raised a regiment of infantry, which became the Twentieth Alabama, of which regiment he became the major, and somewhat later was made the lieutenant colonel of the command.

Assigned to duty in the western army, the regiment did not long remain inactive. Colonel Pettus won laurels by leading the army of General E. Kirby Smith in driving the enemy into Covington and Cincinnati. His regiment was afterward ordered to Mississippi and Colonel Pettus was engaged in the battles of Port Gibson and Baker’s Creek. He was captured at Port Gibson, but succeeded in effecting his escape and in rejoining his command. On the occasion of the promotion of Colonel Garratt at Vicksburg Pettus became the colonel of the regiment.

A notable incident in connection with the siege of Vicksburg gave to Colonel Pettus fame for leadership, and for unquestioned courage throughout the army. At an important point in the works the enemy had captured a valuable redoubt, and General Stephen D. Lee was anxious to have it retaken. The undertaking was full of peril, and the success of the undertaking was doubtful. To perform the perilous undertaking, Colonel Pettus volunteered to the commanding officer his services. Neither his own regiment nor any of the others were willing to be led into so perilous an undertaking, but Waul’s Texas Legion volunteered in a body to make the hazardous attack. So formidable was the redoubt that the enemy supposed himself secure from attack. Taking advantage of this condition, Colonel Pettus, at the head of the brave Texans, dashed unawares on the enemy, threw the forces into utter confusion, and retook the redoubt, together with one hundred prisoners and three flags. Thirty big guns were at once trained on the point, but Colonel Pettus bore away his spoils without the loss of a man.

At Vicksburg he was again conspicuous throughout the siege, was captured when the city fell, but soon exchanged, after which he was made a brigadier general. His command was engaged in the battle of Missionary Ridge, and was with Johnston in the series of conflicts which extended from Dalton to Atlanta and Jonesboro. When Hood was appointed to succeed Johnston, the brigade of General Pettus was with the army throughout that disastrous campaign, and no command of the army was more hotly engaged than was his brigade. It was he who forced the passage of Duck River, forming his men in squads in the face of a galling fire from the rifle pits of the enemy, and succeeded in driving him from his entrenchments with the bayonet.

On the retreat of Hood from Nashville the duty of protecting the rear of the army was imposed on the brigade of General Pettus. With intrepid and dogged courage, he held the enemy in check at many points, and perhaps more than any other, saved the army of Hood from utter destruction. His last service was in North Carolina, where his command was engaged in the battles of Kingston and Bentonville, General Pettus being severely wounded in the latter.

The war being over, General Pettus entered again into the practice of law in Selma. He shared in the struggles incident to the era of reconstruction, during the entire period of which he rendered the most faithful service at great personal sacrifice, declining meanwhile any public recognition of his services by official position. His long experience and native skill placed him in the first rank of practice in the Alabama courts, and often his patience was taxed in the courts presided over by the incompetent judges who occupied the bench during the dark period of reconstruction. Among the judges of that time was the notorious J. Q. Smith, as conspicuous for his lack of knowledge of the law as he was for his impudence and presumption. On one occasion there was a ruling of this incompetent official which was so foreign and far-fetched as to evoke from General Pettus the daring remark that in a practice of many years, and as a presiding judge himself at one time, he had never heard of such a ruling. With a complacent and self-satisfactory air the ignorant man on the bench moved himself with greatly assumed composure and replied: “Ah! General Pettus, you have a great many things to learn yet!”

Sharing in all the momentous movements in the political history of the state in the period of rehabilitation following the reconstruction, General Pettus would not consent to accept public office till 1897, when he was chosen a United States senator from Alabama. In this capacity he served till his death, in 1905, he and Senator Morgan dying within a few months of each other, leaving vacant senatorial representation for Alabama in the highest branch of congress.