William A. Bowles (1799–1873) was a doctor who led the Knights of the Golden Circle in Indiana in the early 1860s. Earlier he founded the town of French Lick, Indiana and began a resort at an area, which lasts to this day.
Bowles was the first to open a lodge at French Lick. He did so after the springs in the area proved to not be saline enough for state-sponsored salt mines.[1] In 1832 the salt springs and accompanying land, almost 1,500 acres (6.1 km2) in total, were purchased by Bowles.[2] In 1840 Bowles would begin to sell the spring water, dubbing it "Pluto's Water", and built a wooden hotel for resort guests.[3]
During the Mexican-American War, governor of Indiana Whitcomb appointed Bowles a colonel of the Second Indiana Regiment, due to political manners like the Wilmot Proviso. On February 22, 1847 during the Battle of Buena Vista the Indiana militia fared poorly, with Bowles being the one to call retreat. A court martial later held declared that the soldiers who retreated were not guilty of cowardice.[4] Jefferson Davis defended Bowles during the proceedings, which resulted in a life long friendship between the two men.[5]
In the 1850s Bowles organized the Knights of the Golden Circle to counteract the Underground Railroad activity within the region. He helped to found the town of French Lick in 1857.[2]
Bowles was made a major general of one of the four military districts established by Sons of Liberty leader Harrison H. Dodd, but the military arm of the Sons of Liberty was "more in Dodd's mind" than a reality.[6]
In June 1863, Confederate spy Thomas Hines visited Bowles, inquiring if Bowles would offer any support for John Hunt Morgan's upcoming raid into Indiana. Bowles told Hines he could raise a force of 10,000, but before the deal was finalized, Hines was told a Union force was approaching, causing him to flee. As a result, there would be no support for Morgan's Raid by Bowles, which cause Morgan to treat harshly anyone in Indiana who claimed was sympathetic to the Confederacy.[7]
In 1864 Bowles was arrested, being listed as a co-conspirator of Dodd's. He was held at a cell at the Federal Building for several weeks before he was arraigned.[8] Bowles was eventually convicted of treason, but on May 31, 1865, two days before being hanged, President Andrew Johnson commuted the sentence to life imprisonment.[9] The conviction of Bowles and the other coconspirators went through the federal courts, and eventually reached the United States Supreme Court where Chief Justice Salmon P. Chase issued a habeas corpus freeing them on April 3, 1866. Later that year on December 17 the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that since the civil courts were still functioning in Indiana at the time Bowles and the rest were convicted by military commission, the convicted were robbed of constitutional rights and were freed under a principle known as Ex parte Milligan.[10]
Bowles was married three times, with the first two ending in divorce.[5]
In 1897 the wooden hotel built by Bowles burnt down, and was replaced by the existing structure known today as the French Lick Resort Casino.[3]
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