Honorable John Minor Botts

John Minor Botts, a native Virginian and prominent member of the state’s Whig Party, sits for a photographic portrait sometime between 1855 and 1865. A member of the House of Delegates (1833-1839) and the U.S. House of Representatives (1839-1843, 1847-1849), Botts organized the working-class neighborhoods of Richmond, Virginia into a tightly controlled and influential political machine known by its critics as the “Botts Tail.” Richmond, after all, was the nerve center of the Whig Party in Virginia, although other Whig bastions included the Tidewater, the Shenandoah Valley, and several counties in the far western part of the state. Whigs were strongest in urban areas, appealing to voters in the growing commercial class, such as merchants, businessmen, and bankers. Their rural support, meanwhile, tended to come from owners of large numbers of slaves whose interests, as planters, were closely tied to the market economy.