hair's breadth from the line of conduct that my own judgment and conscience may dictate, which is to take no lot, part, or share in the responsibility that rests upon those who have brought this whirlpool of desolation and ruin upon my unfortunate country. Nor shall I depart from the position I have taken of doing nothing that can justly subject me to outrage, animadversion, or rebuke. But if to adhere firmly and consistently to the opinions and principles that I have maintained for thirty years, and if to prefer living as I did before the war to living as I have done since the war makes me a traitor, then a traitor's life let me live, or a traitor's death let me die. I am respectfully yours, JOHN M. BOTTS.

"P.S.-Since the above was written, a copy of the Examiner has reached me, containing the following announcement:

"The battle took place on the farm of John Minor Botts.

We may here remark that the property on the farm of this extraordinary individual, of whom the Confederate States stand in such fear, had been religiously respected by the Yankees; whereas the country around was little better than a wilderness, his fences and crops were untouched. But that night made a change in its condition. Three thousand Confederate cavalry bivouacked there after the battle, and fed their horses in his corn-field. The next morning there were very few fence-rails and very little corn left. The men could be heard to say, while building high their fires, "Pile on, boys; they are nothing but d-d old Union rails.”

"I am glad to avail myself of the testimony of this 'leaky vessel,' who fully confirms what I have said above; but although he does not state what is true in regard to the general destruction of property in the neighborhood, for it gives me great pleasure to say that a guard was furnished to every family that asked for it, all of whose property was amply protected, as every one in the neighborhood will testify, yet he certainly states what is true in regard to the general destruction of my property; and I must say that the achievement of three thousand cavalry conquering one man and a corn-field is one of which, in the future, they can take no great pride when their prejudices and passions have subsided.

"Another article has also appeared in the Dispatch recommending my imprisonment or banishment, which is altogether unworthy of notice. I will only say that, whatever other difficulties I may labor under, I do not esteem it a misfortune that I have no soldiers at my command to turn loose upon any citizen, nor aids at my elbow to bring them into discredit with the people. Thank God, when there is a necessity for it, I can do my own writing and my own fighting. J. M. B."

What would have been the effect, if this letter had been published in Richmond at the time, surrounded as I was at the moment by General Lee's whole army, with Stuart and his cavalry on my immediate premises, I know not. Whether it would have produced a reactionary feeling, or have led, as my friends apprehended, to still more serious consequences, can not now be told; but let the consequences have been what they might, I resolved to keep silent no longer. I was actuated far more by a pride of manhood than by the timidity of a contemptible sneak, or a submissive slave to military power. When I first heard that Mr. Daniel, the then editor of the Examiner, had declined to publish the letter because of its “hard hits” at the Confederacy, I wrote to my friends, insisting that it should be published in some paper, and be paid for at advertising prices, but they had become alarmed for my personal safety under its publication and withheld it. This I had not ascertained when the Federal army came in, which cut off all mail intercourse with Richmond. When I did learn it, I was sorely vexed; but as I knew it proceeded from the warmest feelings of kindness and friendship for me, I could not complain; but I could not help feeling that while the government, army, and people were all pommeling me in the face, that it was hard to have my hands tied by my friends, to keep me from striking back at my assailants. It is proper I should here say, that from a scrupulous regard to the obligations of my parole, which I believed carried no moral obligation with it after I ceased to be within the Confederate lines, yet preferring to err, if at all, on the safe side, I was far more circumspect and reticent in my conversations with Federal officers than I was with the officers of the Confederate army, to whom I expressed my hostility to the government and the rebellion in the most unreserved and unmistakable manner.

A CLEAR RECORD DESIRED.

Here my task might be closed, but that I desire to present a clear record, and furnish a full vindication of my whole line of policy from first to last upon all the questions connected with or growing out of the rebellion, and of all that I have said or done of a public nature, which, for want of access to the Southern "reconstructed press," is known only to a limited circle, by which I hope, if I can not secure the confidence of the deluded and cheated South, I may at least command their respect by my consistency and duty to my country, and by my faithful and self-sacrificing devotion to their true interests, which have been so wantonly, cruelly, and wickedly sacrificed by the EMPIRICS, PYROTECHNISTS, TINKERS,

QUACKS, traders and stock-jobbers in politics, who are again at their old work of educating the people to a feeling of disaffection and hostility to their government, which they have no choice but to obey, and who have, by their exhibitions of disloyalty, retarded for an indefinite period the regular and formal participation of the South in the affairs of their national government, and to whose control I do not mean again to submit my fortunes, or my personal liberties or rights, without raising a voice of remonstrance or making an effort to throw it off.

In the winter of 1863, '4, I received a letter from an officer of the "restored government" of Virginia, whose Legislature was then sitting in Alexandria, and while I was in the Federal lines, urging me to accept at the hands of that Legislature a seat in the Senate of the United States, to which I made the following reply:

"Auburn, Culpepper County, Va., January 7, 1864. "DEAR SIR,-I have received the letter of Mr. S——, in which he urges in very earnest terms that I should accept a seat in the Senate of the United States at the hands of the Legislature now in session in Alexandria, an election which he seems to think I have no right to decline, as the friends of the Union every where desire it.

'

"Permit me to say, my good sir, that I duly appreciate the honor designed, which is far beyond any thing that I have reason to expect, now or hereafter, from any other source; but high and dignified as is the position of United States senator, which in ordinary times is one that might reasonably satisfy the ambition of any moderate man, yet in the present condition of the country, and of the state of which I am native here and to the manner born,' I could not with propriety, and with my convictions of duty, accept any appointment at the hands of either of the numerous governments now exercising legislative powers over any of the dismembered fragments of what once constituted the proud and revered old commonwealth of Virginia.

"In taking the position I have done in reference to the rebellion, I have been actuated by no sordid considerations, and by no selfish desire to advance my political or personal fortunes; but it has been forced upon me by the clear, unclouded, conscientious, and overwhelming convictions of my best judgment, free from all passion, prejudice, or ambition.

"From the present aspect of affairs, as they appear from the standpoint I occupy, it looks as if the day was not very far distant when (if ever) I may be of some service in healing those dissensions and distractions, growing out of the grossest misrepresentations and frauds, that now

divide the nation, the state, and almost every locality, and of developing, to some extent, that sentiment of loyalty and nationality which, though smothered for the time, has never yet been extinguished; but this can only be done, if at all, by adhering firmly and consistently to the opinions and principles of a long life, which have 'grown with my growth and strengthened with my strength,' until they have become a part of my second nature. In other words, I must permit no shadow of suspicion from any quarter to attach to my unselfish patriotism or the disinterested integrity of my purpose, which the acceptance of office might subject me to.

"The extent of my aspirations for the present is to return 'good for evil' to this once venerable and venerated, but now poor, down-trodden, shattered, heartlessly sacrificed, and dilapidated old 'Mother of States,' that has been reduced to her present miserable condition by her leading and trusted statesmen, who, with miscalculation upon miscalculation, and blunder upon blunder, with every prophecy and promise unfulfilled, have been groping their way in Siberian darkness, and with the most inexcusable ignorance, after a phantom engendered by a corroded and diseased imagination, which was excited by a heartless selfishness and insane ambition to perpetuate their own power, that has been without a parallel in the history of the world.

"I am aware that my counsels, for the last three years, have been spurned and derided, and my person even threatened with violence by many who once looked with a more charitable and friendly eye upon my suggestions and advice.

"I have reason to think this hallucination is passing away, and is being rapidly dissipated by the terrible ordeal to which the fortunes of the South have been subjected; and it may be, at least I am not without such hope, that at some future day I may, in some way, stand as a link between the North and the South, by which the chain which once bound them together may again connect them; and to this complexion I must come at last, for neither passion, nor prejudice, nor pride, nor suffering, nor want, nor hunger, nor strife can endure forever; and the time must come when men will look at things as they are, and no longer close their eyes at bright midday, and swear that the sun does not shine, because they desire to shut out the light.

"For these and many other reasons not necessary to mention here, I must beg to be excused for respectfully declining the high position to which it is proposed to elevate me.

"I am, very respectfully, your obedient servant, JOHN M. BOTTS."

MR. BOTTS'S LINCOLN LETTER.

About this time I received a letter from a friend in Washington, who expressed an anxious desire to learn what impressions I had formed of Mr. Lincoln and his administration. I answered him at some length. In the discussion of various questions connected with the war, embracing the Emancipation Proclamation, the status of the states, etc., etc., with Federal officers, reverend divines, professors of law in collegiate institutions, and others who called to pay their respects, I had not unfrequent occasion to read this letter. There was a general wish expressed that Mr. Lincoln could see it. I said, while it was a private letter, intended for no eye than that of the friend to whom it was addressed, and while I had no right to obtrude my opinions upon Mr. Lincoln, yet if Mr. Lincoln should express a desire to see it, I could have no objection to his doing so. This, I suppose, was communicated to Mr. Lincoln, for he shortly after did express a wish to see the letter, and the gentleman to whom it was addressed was authorized to place it in his hands, which he did. Some three months after the friend called upon Mr. Lincoln for the letter, and Mr. Lincoln replied, "The letter is your private property, of course, and, if you require it, I must return it to you, but you would greatly oblige me by permitting me to retain it ;" to which my friend assented, and Mr. Lincoln died with it in his possession.

There is one incident connected with this letter of which I feel considerable satisfaction, and at the risk of the charge of vanity, I will here mention.

On one occasion, twelve gentlemen, chiefly ministers of the Gospel, headed by Charles Stewart, Esq., of Philadelphia, President of the Christian Association, and the Rev. Dr. Kirk, of Boston, called to see me; we got into a discussion of the Emancipation Proclamation, and I read this letter to them, as expressive of my views on the subject. When I finished the letter, Mr. Stewart rose from his seat, and with some very flattering remarks, said, substantially, "that no such emotions had been created in his bosom since the commencement of the war as had been excited by the reading of that letter, and that he thought it was eminently proper that they should return thanks to God that one such man had been preserved in the South, and that the Divine blessing should be asked upon the head of the 'venerable statesman' who had been capable of entertaining and expressing sentiments of so much patriotism and devotion to his country;" whereupon the Rev. Dr. Kirk offered up a most impressive