[3] Boteler's mother died when he was five years old, and his father sent him to Baltimore to be raised by his grandfather, merchant Alexander Robinson until he was eleven.

Boteler also throughout his life championed the new steamboat technology (which he witnessed as a boy on the Potomac River at Shepherdstown), and the inventor James Rumsey.

He published an illustrated book, My Ride to the Barbecue in 1860 about a major civic event that he had hosted on September 11, 1858 (probably in conjunction with his political campaign described below), which reportedly had been attended by 5,000 people.

[18] In a widely acclaimed speech as the House was organized in January 1860, Boteler declared himself for Union, as well as decried abolitionism and those who supported John Brown's raid, accusing them of encouraging the bloodbath that he had witnessed at Harpers Ferry.

[19] In March 1861, Boteler met the newly elected President Abraham Lincoln and attempted to lobby him against a use-of-force bill.

Boteler was a member of the three-man committee that designed the Confederate government's seal, which featured an image of George Washington.

[21] Meanwhile, Boteler's neighbor, William Augustine Morgan, had led the Shepherdstown Cavalry for several years (including responding to the 1859 John Brown raid).

[22] Less than a month later, Union troops arrested Alexander Boteler at his home, "Fountain Rock" outside Shepardstown and imprisoned him across the river.

He convinced his captors to release him, but Union troops burned his cement mill on August 19, 1861, as an alleged snipers' nest.

[23] The "Pleasant Valley" area was often contested; various troops would burn his plantation's fields many times during the conflict, and Union forces would captured four Confederate cannons in the mill ruins following the Battle of Antietam.

In November 1861, Confederate papers publicized his escape from Union raiders at Fountain Rock, and his wife's outrage at the Yankee action.

He led projects to bring the Shenandoah Valley Railroad to Shepardstown, as well as to connect his hometown by telegraph to the wider world.

Boteler benefited from legislation restoring political rights to Confederates in June 1872, and then unsuccessfully ran for Congress as an Independent in 1872 and 1874.

[1] In 1883, Boteler responded to a speech by Frederick Douglass at the dedication of Storer College in Harpers Ferry by publishing an article about his experience of that raid in Century Magazine.

[35] Boteler died in Shepherdstown, West Virginia, on May 8, 1892, months after his wife of five decades and was interred with her at Elmwood Cemetery.

[38] The ruins of Boteler's cement mill still exist and were bought in 2011 by a coalition of government and nonprofit groups, with the intention of adding that site to the Antietam National Battlefield Park.

The Shepherdstown Men's Club bought 20 acres in 1961 for use as a civic park; a gazebo was built on the overlook where the Fountain Head manor house had once stood.