Albert Trorillo Siders Barnitz

[ܒbärnits]

Barnitz, Albert Trorillo Siders ˈbärnits (1835-1912) Union army officer and poet, born at Bloody Run, Bedford County, Pennsylvania. In the Civil War, Barnitz commanded the 2nd Ohio Cavalry; in the Plains Indians Wars (1854-90), he was the captain and company commander of the 7th Cavalry against the Cheyenne Indians of the Central Plains. Barnitz was brevetted a full colonel for distinguished gallantry in Gen. George Armstrong Custer's charge on Black Kettle's Cheyenne village on the Washita (1868).

In the Civil War, under Gen. George Armstrong Custer, Barnitz led the 2nd Ohio Cavalry in taking Confederate arms and prisoners near Appomattox and he wrote a twenty-five-stanza epic poem, “With Custer at Appomattox, ” which he often read at veterans' meetings. His initial adulation of Custer turned to contempt, and in May 1867 he wrote “(Custer) spares no effort to render himself generally obnoxious” and added, “He is the most complete example of a petty tyrant that I have ever seen.”

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