On Saturday night Capt. Goodwin, by order of the Government,
proceeded, with a party of select-men to the farm of John Minor Botts, and took
him and all of his papers and private correspondence in custody. Leaving an officer in charge of the papers
and house of Botts, Capt. Goodwin brought him prisoner to this city, and lodged
him in McDaniel’s negro jail, situated in Blankinship’s alley, some fifty yards
north of Franklin street.
Captain Goodwin then went to the farms of Valentine Heckler
and Franklin Stearns, and took both these well-known Union men, and all of
their papers and letters, and brought them to this city.
Botts’s and Heckler’s letters and papers have not yet been
examined. Stern’s letters have undergone
only a cursory and partial examination, and, so far, nothing of interest has
been found among them, except several letters from his friend Botts, begging
for money.
We are under the impression that, as yet, the Government is
in possession of no positive information that would convict Botts of
treason. But he is known to be the
recognized leader of the disaffected, all the low Germans of the Red
Republican, Carl Schurz school, and the vile remnant of the Union party.
Against Stearns’ and Heckler’s loyalty the Government has
been for a month in the possession of the most conclusive evidence; and it
feels confident of its ability to prove that both of these men have been loud
in their denunciations of what they have been please to term the “Rebellion,”
and have, over and over again, expressed their willingness to sacrifice their
entire property to restore the dominion in the South of the United States
Government.
The man Wardwell, another party arrested, has, since the
beginning of the war, been known to every citizen as a blatant and defiant Union
man.
Miller, who has also been lodged in jail, is the chief or
high priest of the secret Black or Red German Republican societies of Richmond,
some of whose members, it can be proved, have since the reverse of our army at
Fort Donelson, boasted that they had thousands of arms and abundance of
ammunition concealed in the city, and that the men were enrolled who would use
them on the first approach of the Yankee army.
An Irishman, named John M. Higgins, has also been arrested
and put in the same prison. Higgins is a
connection of Col. Corcoran of the Yankee army.
Two of Higgins’ aunts married two of Corcoran’s uncles. A letter from Corcoran to Higgins, advising
the latter to send his wife and family North, and containing assurance that he
(Corcoran) would have them safely conveyed under flag of truce, has recently
been intercepted by our Government.
Whether our Government has any evidence of Higgins’ intention to follow
Corcoran’s counsel, has not transpired.
It is said that Stearns, the whisky man, on approaching the
prison, surveyed it with a most contemptuous expression, and remarked, “If you
are going to imprison all the Union men, you will have to provide a much larger
jail than this.” Mr. Stearns will, we think,
be not a little mistaken in his calculations.
It will be recollected that, on Thursday last, John Gold and
Elias Paulding were arraigned for having made use of treasonable language, and
that it appeared on investigation, that Gold had proclaimed himself a Union
man, and announced that the stars and stripes would soon wave from the top of
our capitol, and that Elias Paulding amended Gold’s announcement with an
emphatic “That’s so.” We stated in our
last paper that the Mayor had turned both parties over to the Confederate
authorities. In this we were
mistaken. The Mayor had merely committed
them for further examination, and they were accordingly brought into court on
Saturday, and again committed till this morning. – {Richmond Examiner, March 3.
– Published in The Burlington Weekly Hawk-Eye,
Burlington, Iowa, Saturday, March 15, 1862, p. 1
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