Biography
John Minor Botts was a Virginia politician, lawyer, and former U.S. Congressman who became one of the most prominent Southern Unionists during the Civil War. A vocal opponent of secession, he remained loyal to the Union and wrote letters criticizing the Confederate government. After the Confederacy suspended the writ of habeas corpus, Richmond's Confederate provost marshal John H. Winder had Botts arrested without trial on March 2, 1862, jailing him alongside fellow Unionist Franklin Stearns. He was held in Richmond at Castle Godwin — a converted former slave jail — where he spent roughly eight weeks in solitary confinement. He was never tried or convicted, and was released after promising not to publish further incendiary letters. In 1863 he moved to a plantation in Culpeper County; he was briefly detained again in October 1863 on the order of General J.E.B. Stuart but released the same day. Botts stands as a leading example of wartime Unionist dissent suppressed by the Confederate government within the South.
In his 1866 account, Botts reproduces the April 9, 1862 order establishing a military Court of Inquiry into his detention. He says he declined counsel and conducted his own defense. The inquiry and conditional parole were separate from a criminal conviction. He also reproduces George W. Randolph’s April 29 order permitting him to remain at his own house on parole, and states that he was confined to his premises for the next four months before being allowed to walk beyond them while remaining on parole. Thus the end of his jail confinement was followed by a period of house confinement. In the separate October 1863 episode, his reproduced letter reports detention at Culpeper Court House from about 10:30 a.m. until 5 p.m., when he was discharged because there was no charge against him. John Minor Botts, The Great Rebellion (1866), printed pages 287–293 and 302–303.
Botts’s reproduced April 9, 1862 Court of Inquiry order lists Colonel Tausel as president, Colonel Porter as another officer, and Brunell as judge advocate or recorder, using the names as rendered in this source. These were roles in the military inquiry into his detention, not a later criminal conviction. Botts says he declined counsel and represented himself; the subsequent conditional house-parole phase remained distinct from unrestricted freedom. Botts, The Great Rebellion, pp.279–293.
