While in Mobile, Thomas Rhodes dabbled as an attorney, dealing mainly with estate settlements, but he began to set his sights on the richly timbered lands in nearby Jackson County, Mississippi.
The Rhodes family held a residence in Mobile, Alabama, but put down roots in Jackson County as early as 1840, and Rufus' father began operating a sawmill there.
About this time, Rufus accepted a position as an examiner in the United States Patent office in Washington, D. C. and moved there with his family after June, 1857.
The application was rejected by the examiner on the grounds that the idea of coating telegraph wires with gutta percha was well known and had been in use in America, England, and France as early as 1839.
Its neighboring structure, 463 E Street North was described in 1859 as a four-story brick house with a back building, a bathroom, and gas [lighting] throughout.
Four days later, Rufus Rhodes wrote a letter from Washington, D.C., to Mississippi governor John J. Pettus, leaving no question as to where his loyalties lay.
To do it would involve not only a loss of my own self-respect, but brand me as a disgraced and dishonored man in the estimation of all for whose good opinion I am anxious, namely the Southern people.
I regard the election of Lincoln as a verdict against the equality of the southern states on the part of the sectional majority of the north….” “Infatuated by a spell which love of the Union and a veneration for the works of our Father’s hands cast over our own perceptions,” he wrote, “we have hitherto refused to see and hear, or, seeing and hearing, to take heed of the lurid glare which lighted up and the muttering thunder which resonated from the northern skies with increasing spread and volume….Not altogether unnaturally we permitted this Delilah by her blandishments to steal away our judgment and persuade us to cling to the fond delusion that a sense of justice and of the right only slumbered among the northern people and would yet be awakened to gladden us by renewed demonstrations of fraternity and affection as in bye gone days when our fathers lived, until lo!
The Philistine hosts are upon us….” Rufus concluded his letter to Governor Pettus with this offer: “Not doubting that all Mississippians entertain the views I have thus hastily expressed I must believe that Mississippi will secede from the Union….My object therefore in writing this is to tender through you her honored chief magistrate my humble services in that event in any sphere in which they can be of use.” In Washington D. C., forty-two year old Rufus Rhodes put his name to a letter, on November 15, 1860, that was being circulated amongst the friends of B. F. DeBow .
DeBow sent the letter to the editor of the Charleston Mercury to show support to those friends there and elsewhere who were expressing “their opinions in regard to the incoming black republican administration.” The letter, to which Rufus and eighteen other signed, read “The undersigned, occupying offices under the Federal Government at Washington, deem that it is due to their Southern friends to say that under no circumstances will they consent to hold office under Abraham Lincoln.” The Cleveland Leader of December 17, 1860, reported in disgust that Rufus R. Rhodes, a clerk in the Patent office had been approved six weeks of leave to visit Mississippi.
Rhodes, a secessionist, was to continue receiving his $2,500.00 salary while taking concerting measures to break up the Union as a member of the Mississippi [secession] Convention.
Rufus appears to have moved his family back to Mississippi during this time, as his son Samuel was born at [East] Pascagoula on February 6, 1861.
Of the exiled citizens of New Orleans, one was Rhodes' sister, Mrs. Theodore Duval, and her family and also his father-in-law, Samuel Fisher.
“My Dear Sir,” he began, “As an old friend I venture to invoke your services on behalf of my father-in-law Mr. Sam’l C. Fisher who is a fugitive from New Orleans where he resided and who is by the chance of war cut off from all of his resources.
When the Civil War ended, Rufus signed an Oath of Allegiance to the United States on May 23, 1865, shortly after his capture at Danville.
Rhodes returned briefly to Jackson County, Mississippi, but then moved to New Orleans, Louisiana, to practice law prior to April, 1866.
Two weeks later, the Second District Judicial Court of Orleans Parish appointed Martha Rhodes, his widow, as executor to the estate.
On December 5, 1870, all furniture and personal items belonging to Rufus at his 319 Second Street residence and his Commercial Place business office.