Saturday, June 2, 2012

Arrest of Union Men in Richmond


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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