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.
