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The Great Rebellion: Its Secret History, Rise, Progress, and Disastrous Failure (Classic Reprint)
(In presenting this work to the public, I do not invite cr...)
In presenting this work to the public, I do not invite criticism, but, of course, do not expect it will escape either that of the press or others. If it is not harshly and bitterly denounced by the Democratic press, it will fare better than any thing I have said, written, or done since my first entrance upon the political stage. I have been told that there was an art to be studied in writing a book, different from all other arts and all other writings, without which no one was likely to be successful. If this be true, then this, my first effort af book-writing for publication, must prove a sad failure, for the only art I have studied has been the art of telling the truth in a plain, simple style that every reader can readily comprehend, and I think there will not be found a passage in the book that it will be necessary for any child to read twice to catch its meaning. The chief merit I claim for the work is its strict fidelity to historical facts, which will be recognized by every intelligent and impartial reader as he proceeds.
(Typographical errors above are due to OCR software and don't occur in the book.)
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John Minor Botts was an American congressman, lawyer, and author. He is noted for his work using the progressive agricultural methods in operating a plantation called "Half Sink" on the Chickahominy River in Varina Farms area about nine miles east of downtown Richmond.
Background
John Minor Botts was born on September 16, 1802 and was the son of Jane (Tyler) Botts and Benjamin A. Botts, well-known Virginia lawyer, one of Aaron Burr's counsel, was born at Dumfries, Prince William County, Virginia. He lived for a short time at Fredericksburg, and was living in Richmond when both his parents perished in the Richmond Theatre fire in 1811.
Education
John's education was confined to Latin, Greek, and mathematics, as taught in the private schools of the day.
Career
At eighteen, with six weeks' private study, John was admitted to the bar, and practised law with fair success for six years. He soon became a successful farmer. He was elected in 1833, serving till 1839, when he entered Congress as a memberfrom the Richmond district. He served till 1843, and again in the session 1847-49.
In 1852, he resumed his law practise in Richmond, making it a matter of principle to take only cases in which he was satisfied with the justice of his position. He was a member of the Whig convention of 1852, at Baltimore, casting the only vote from the South for Scott on the first ballot. After the collapse of the Whig party, he was an unsuccessful candidate for Congress on the Know-Nothing ticket in 1854.
From this time, he gave himself to opposing what he believed to be a conspiracy of certain "Democratic bosses" to bring on secession rather than yield control, and from this time his hostility to Jefferson Davis grew more intense. He was especially violent in his characterization of Governor Wise, of Virginia, "The Unwise Henry A. ," asserting that the John Brown affair was deliberately used to further the secession conspiracy.
As a member of the reorganization movement of 1859, against the Democrats, he supported Goggin against Letcher for governor of Virginia, and was considered as a presidential nominee of the "Opposition" in 1860.
He claimed, in what was one of his greatest speeches, at Lynchburg, October 1860, that the Democratic party deliberately split in order to make inevitable the election of Lincoln and the success of the secession plot.
Nominated for the convention called in Virginia to decide on secession, and defeated, as he claimed, by fraud, he did what he considered his greatest piece of work in trying to prevent the secession of Virginia. There followed the most disputed act of his life when he said on the basis of personal knowledge that President Lincoln offered through J. B. Baldwin to stop the fleet which was about to sail for Charleston if the Virginia convention would adjourn sine die. This offer was not reported to the convention and in his testimony before the Reconstruction Committee, February 10, 1866, Baldwin testified that no such offer had been made.
After the passage of the Ordinance of Secession, Botts, believing that secession was now inevitable, wrote a series of letters to Attorney-General Edward Bates, at Washington, proposing a constitutional amendment in accordance with which the Southern States could withdraw peacefully. With the ratification of the action of the convention by the people, Botts withdrew from public life to his farm near Richmond, and rarely left his premises, though he talked freely.
On March 1, 1862, President Davis proclaimed martial law in and near Richmond, and before daybreak next morning Botts was arrested and confined for eight weeks in a negro jail. After the transfer of Benjamin, secretary of war, whom Botts cordially hated, to the State Department, Randolph, the new secretary of war, had him released on parole.
In January 1863, he purchased a farm and located in Culpeper County, entertaining officers of both armies and suffering from depredations of soldiers of both armies. He was offered the nomination for United States Senator by the "Restored Government" in 1864, but refused. In 1866, he proposed a plan of reconstruction which was rejected.
He presided over the organization meeting of the "Union Republican Party of Virginia" at Alexandria, in May 1866, and opposed manhood suffrage strongly, but finally accepted it. He led the Virginia delegation to the "Convention of Southern Loyalists" at Philadelphia in 1866. Representing the conservative element of the Unionists, remembered as one of those who had signed Jefferson Davis's bail bond, he lost control of the party to the radicals.
Afterward to the disappointment of his older friends he accepted the radical position, was defeated for the constitutional convention by a conservative from his own county, and for the last two years of his life took no active part in politics.
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Politics
In 1831, Botts entered politics as a Whig candidate for the legislature. Distrusting and denouncing the Democrats as a party of disunion led by John C. Calhoun, Botts was an outstanding opponent of every measure advocated by Democrats, standing with them only in opposition to Northern abolitionists. He ably supported John Quincy Adams in his fight against the "Gag Law" of 1836.
He considered President Tyler guilty of treachery to the Whig party in his bank veto and ever after opposed him unrelentingly. Botts was a member of a select committee which criticized Tyler's veto of the Whig Tariff, declaring that his reasons were "feeble, inconsistent, and unsatisfactory".
He opposed strenuously the annexation of Texas and the Mexican War, but as chairman of the Committee on Military Affairs, did his part in bringing the war to a successful conclusion. He advocated a division of the state at the Blue Ridge Mountains with equal representation in both houses of the legislature.
Views
Although a slaveholder, Botts vehemently opposed extension of slavery into territories, and blamed Democrat John C. Calhoun for increasing sectional animosities by trying to annex Texas.
Personality
Botts was powerful in build, aggressive, often violent in speech.
Quotes from others about the person
John's grave marker reads: "He was under all circumstances an inflexible friend of the American Union. 'I know no North, no South, no East, no West. I know only my Country, my whole Country, and nothing but my Country. '"
Connections
Botts married Mary Whiting Blair. He was survived by one son, two daughters, and his younger brother Charles Tyler Botts (1808-1884), who was a journalist in California. John Minor Botts was interred in the Shockoe Hill Cemetery in Richmond, as had been his wife Mary and at least their son Archibald, and as would be fellow unionists Elizabeth Van Lew and Franklin Stearns.