April 22, 1862 (Monday): Shooting at Old Capitol Prison

The Old Brick Capitol

WAR DEPARTMENT, Washington, April 23, 1862.
Honorable CHARLES B. CALVERT, House of Representatives.

    SIR: I am directed by the Secretary of War to inform you in reply to your letter of the 21st instant that he has already ordered a full investigation of the circumstances attending the shooting of Jesse Wharton at the Old Capitol Prison, and that when the report of the officers intrusted with this duty shall have been submitted to this Department you will be promptly advised of the result of their inquiries.
I have the honor to be, very respectfully, your obedient servant,


P. H. WATSON,
Assistant Secretary of War.

Official Records, Series II., Vol. 3, Part 1, Page 471.

Wharton was an attorney for Maryland who was being held as a political prisoner in the old Capitol Prison.  Prisoners there were not allowed to put their hands out the windows.  This instruction Wharton, a childhood friend of John Wilkes Booth, did comply with.  But he rested his arms against the bars from the inside and got into an argument with a guard who ordered him away from the window.  It was one of those trivial arguments which assumes a grave dimension when one of the two persons is armed.  The guard shot Wharton, who died after lingering for some hours.  His family, including his wife whose father whose a Union colonel, was with him when he passed away.  The case became something of a sensation in the papers of the time.  The prison was in the old brick capitol building, which served as the U.S. Capitol from 1815-1825 after the burning of the capitol by the British during the War of 1812.