The Lost Gettysburg Address

by David T. Dixon

  Anderson was promoted to major of the First Virginia on February 10, 1778. He and his new regiment saw action at the Battle of Monmouth, New Jersey, in late June. It was a standoff that proved that the American army was disciplined enough to hold its own in a protracted, large-scale engagement. As the war continued, Anderson’s services were always in high demand. In the fall of 1779, an alliance between more than five hundred white, free black, and slave soldiers from Saint-Domingue under the command of French Admiral Comte d’Estaing and American troops commanded by General Benjamin Lincoln devised a plan to recapture the port of Savannah from the British. Lincoln wanted Anderson and the First Virginia to join the expedition. On the morning of October 9, the attack began.

  The First Virginia was ordered to assault the British siege defenses at the Spring Hill redoubt. The earthworks were soft and between sixteen and eighteen feet high. Anderson admonished his troops to refrain from firing until they reached the top of the embrasure. After the bugle sounded, Anderson led his men in a scramble up the mountain of soil. Very few made it. Major Anderson scaled the parapet and was rewarded with a sword through the shoulder. The force of the blow caused him to slide feet-first down the mound, striking the ground so hard that he ruptured his abdomen. The attack was abandoned. It was small consolation when Anderson’s body servant, Spruce, shot and killed one of the defending grenadiers before dragging his master from the ditch.

  On his retreat, Major Anderson encountered Polish-born brigadier general Casimir Pulaski, later called the “father of American cavalry.” Pulaski was credited with saving the life of General Washington as the result of his brave stand at Brandywine. The Polish hero had been mortally wounded by grape shot as he tried to defend retreating forces at Savannah. Anderson and Pulaski were taken to the privateer Wasp, where Anderson stayed with him day and night. Before he died, Pulaski gave his sword to Anderson in gratitude for his friendship and service. The Savannah campaign was a dismal failure. French and American forces blamed each other, and the French admiral sailed away, leaving General Lincoln to his own devices. The Americans retreated to Charleston to spend the winter, while Anderson made another journey to the hospital. The major was still recuperating when British generals Henry Clinton and Charles Cornwallis and a force of fourteen thousand men and ninety ships laid siege to Charleston on April 1, 1780.

  Lincoln finally surrendered the city and his five thousand troops on May 12. It was the greatest defeat suffered by the Americans in the war. The invalid Anderson was thrown into Fort Moultrie and given only three spoons and a tin plate. British officers gave him a permit to fish for his own food, but a British guard tore it up, saying that the fish were “too damned good for any rebel against the king.” Anderson was finally exchanged after nine months of captivity. He joined General Daniel Morgan’s command and eventually reached Richmond, where he received yet another promotion, this time to lieutenant colonel of Virginia’s Third Regiment.4

  As the focus of the war shifted to Virginia, Richard Anderson’s knowledge of the countryside became highly valued. Washington appointed him aide-de-camp to General Lafayette. The French marquis was under pressure from Cornwallis, so he abandoned Richmond in order to protect his stores of supplies at Albemarle Court House. With more than seven thousand British troops pressing him, Lafayette called on General Anthony Wayne for assistance. “The boy cannot escape me,” crowed Cornwallis. When Wayne was delayed, Lafayette sent Anderson to urge him to move faster. Three days passed with no movement, so the marquis ordered Wayne to move by forced march and instructed Anderson to send him hourly reports of troop movements.5

  Anderson entered Wayne’s tent and immediately requested a pen, ink, and paper. He told Wayne that he had been asked to repeat the order to advance and asked what the contents of his first hourly report should contain. Wayne was taken aback. “Do you mean to insult me?” he asked Anderson. The aide replied that he was only carrying out the orders of a superior officer. “Superior!” Wayne fumed. “Superior! Do you dare call any damned foreigner, and a boy, too, my superior?” A torrent of obscenities followed, in which Wayne impugned Anderson for associating himself with a “fortune-seeking Frenchman.” The general eventually lost all control, pacing up and down in a ferocious rage. Little wonder his nickname was “Mad Anthony.” After four such tirades had concluded, Anderson suggested that the only hope for success in their cause was for every officer to obey the orders of a superior. Wayne seemed about to explode. Suddenly his expression changed from anger to excitement. He responded to Anderson’s request by shouting, “I’ll jine him! Tell him I’ll jine him! By God! Tell him I’ll jine him tomorrow!”

  Wayne and eight hundred muskets arrived at Lafayette’s headquarters and the Marquis took the offensive. He forced Cornwallis to retreat to Yorktown as part of Clinton’s ill-advised attempt to hold both New York and Virginia. Lafayette wrote to Washington: “It is the most beautiful sight which I may ever behold.” Anderson had grown close to Lafayette during six months of service. When Washington ordered the aide to help Governor Thomas Nelson Jr. organize the state militia, Anderson and Lafayette said their reluctant goodbyes. Cornwallis surrendered and the war ended, but Lieutenant Colonel Anderson stayed with the army until it disbanded in 1783.6

  Richard Anderson had served with great honor and bravery for seven and a half years. He had witnessed many of the most important events of the young nation’s fight for independence and was on intimate terms with many of its most important military leaders. As significant as his individual contributions to the Revolution were, Anderson’s greatest legacy was the direction he gave to his children. He had suffered many hardships to help win freedom for his fellow Americans. His sons and daughters were expected to honor him by making their own sacrifices in the service of their country.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Bear Grass Lessons

  RICHARD CLOUGH ANDERSON returned home to Virginia a changed man. His adventures on the high seas and on countless battlefields were over. Only thirty-three years old, he could not see himself leading a quiet life in the Virginia countryside. His fellow founding members of the Society of the Cincinnati decided that Anderson was the logical choice to take charge of land grants due Virginia’s Revolutionary War veterans. In December of 1783, Anderson signed a contract to become surveyor-general of two tracts of land in the west. The first was in Kentucky, between the Green and Cumberland Rivers. The other tract lay between the Little Miami and Scioto Rivers in Ohio’s Northwest Territory. When spring came, Anderson loaded his belongings on seven pack horses and set out for the Falls of Ohio (now Louisville) accompanied by three slaves. He built a log cabin at the headwaters of Bear Grass Creek on a grant of five hundred acres in what later became Jefferson County.1

  From the beginning of his residence in this largely unsettled area, Anderson attempted to impose civility and order on what was essentially a raw wilderness. He founded the first masonic lodge west of the Allegheny Mountains in 1784. Indian tribes dominated the Ohio land tracts and frequently followed game into Kentucky, making settlement there a risky proposition. Anderson’s surveyors were especially vulnerable. Mountains of paperwork chained Anderson to his office most of the time. When he did get out, he often accompanied George Rogers Clark, the founder of the Commonwealth of Kentucky, on hunting expeditions in the deep forest. In 1787, Anderson married Clark’s sister Elizabeth. Three years later he began building his dream house, a Georgian-style stone mansion that he dubbed “Soldier’s Retreat.”

  Anderson waited to occupy his new home until the Indian threat had lessened. In the fall of 1789, Indians raided Chenoweth Station, killing several members of that family. When Anderson arrived on the horrible scene the next morning, he encountered a four-year-old child, apparently unharmed. “We are all dead here, Colonel Anderson,” the little girl said. This looked to be true as a servant and three of the child’s brothers lay dead on the cabin floor. The girl had been spared when her bed was overturned by the intruders, throwing her against
the wall and sheltering her behind the mattress. Further investigation of the grisly scene found little Jamie Chenoweth lying by the wood pile with a tomahawk gash in his forehead. He rose, fully conscious. Mrs. Chenoweth was found in the woods nearby, still alive despite her missing scalp. She had played dead when the Indian tomahawk thrown at her missed its mark; she had endured the heinous operation without crying out. Both survived. In 1793, Anderson’s former acquaintance, “Mad Anthony” Wayne, defeated a combined force of Indians at Fallen Timbers. Settlement of the countryside began in earnest.2

  Elizabeth Clark Anderson gave her husband five offspring before dying shortly after her namesake daughter was born in December 1794. The grieving widower had four surviving children to raise and a large business and farm to oversee. In September 1797 he married Sarah Marshall, the cousin of his old friend and Revolutionary War comrade John Marshall. Marshall was destined for greatness in his role as chief justice of the United States Supreme Court. Sarah Marshall Anderson bore the old colonel’s next twelve children. She christened her ninth child and youngest surviving son with the name Charles. The family called him Charley.

  One of Charley Anderson’s earliest memories was accompanying his slave “nurse boy” Frank on an errand to deliver a dinner basket to his older brothers and sisters at the schoolhouse a few miles away. Frank held Charley’s hand as they inched their way across the knee-deep Bear Grass Creek on a long board, just below Uncle Tompkins spring. The young slave boy stopped abruptly and pointed down at the waters below. Charley was amazed at what he saw. There, reflected in the quiet clear pool, was a young boy clothed in a blue and white calico girl’s gown with a red morocco skull cap, replete with a cotton knot and tassels. Fine, curly white hair cascaded down from the comical hat and framed the face of the innocent youngster. Dirty bare feet and creamy white skin completed the visage. Charley giggled with glee as he realized that he was gazing at himself for the very first time. What a delightful surprise indeed. Life on the Bear Grass for the youngest son of Richard Clough Anderson and his wife Sarah was languid and luxurious. Charley’s mother and sisters doted on the bright little tot, and he loved being spoiled.3

  A few weeks later, when the boys were on a similar excursion, the bucolic bubble that had sheltered young Charley for most of his brief existence suddenly burst. Before him, under the massive limbs of an ancient elm, stood his skinny teenaged brother Robert and a huge, burly boy named Ben Dorsey. The boxing tree was known throughout the county as the appointed place to settle scores. A crowd of noisy boys, and even a few adult male spectators, had assembled on the north side of the lane by the elm to watch the pitched battle and cheer for their favorite. As Robert and Ben stripped off their shirts, Charley clung fast to Frank, and the two youngsters withdrew out of sight of the battle, but not beyond hearing distance. The fight raged on for what seemed like an interminable time. Finally it ended. Frank and Charley ran home to tell the tale of a contest they had not seen. It would not be the last time that Robert Anderson, who later surrendered Fort Sumter, faced overwhelming odds with courage in defeat. The coddled youngsters realized that life was not always a pastoral fantasy. Such lessons took years to reemerge to the forefront of Charley’s consciousness. For most of his childhood, times were sweet indeed.

  When guests entered the big house at Soldier’s Retreat, they understood how hard Charley’s father had worked to replicate some semblance of Virginia’s colonial elite society in his new environment. Neighbors and visitors marveled at the sheer size and elegance of Colonel Anderson’s mansion. It seemed out of place with the rude log cabins and modest frame dwellings nearby. From its beginning, the Anderson plantation became a must-see attraction for all who journeyed to the developing region. The sixteen-room house was constructed of local gray limestone, with walls three feet thick. Ascending a five-foot staircase through a pair of folding black walnut doors, visitors encountered a passage eighteen feet wide, which led due south to a corresponding set of doors and steps. To either side of the hall passage were various rooms, each about twenty feet square, including parlor, office, dining room, and Sarah Anderson’s bedroom. Steps from the rear of the dining room led outside to kitchen, smokehouse, bathhouse, and other outbuildings. In this arrangement the residence was similar to other large dwellings of wealthy plantation owners of the day.

  The stone exterior was certainly an unusual feature in this frontier area, but it was the second floor that revealed a truly lavish surprise. The upper hall had a banister staircase to the attic and various doors to other bedrooms. The unique feature of this private home, however, was a ballroom twenty by forty-two feet, lighted by five windows running along the mansion’s south side. Large, high-backed cherry chairs, carved in the latest fashion, graced the vast expanse. This room was constructed for one purpose only: dancing. Colonel Anderson hired a professional master to teach his children and neighbors during weekly dancing classes. Slave fiddlers furnished the music. Regularly scheduled balls drew young men and women from as far away as Louisville, some ten miles distant. Participants danced Virginia reels and “contre” dances and often spent the night on the property. Colonel Anderson, a stern and stoic man, never danced himself, but his wife Sarah danced as often as she could. In the midst of this atmosphere of refined frolic, Soldier’s Retreat became the center of elite social life in Jefferson County.

  Despite fathering his first child at age thirty-eight with his first wife, Elizabeth Clark Anderson, Richard Clough Anderson had eighteen children in all, thirteen of whom lived to adulthood. His last child, Sarah Jane, was born in 1822, when the colonel was seventy-one years old. Sarah Marshall Anderson, his second wife, was nearly thirty years his junior. When Charley arrived on the scene on June 1, 1814, he shared the household with his parents, six siblings, various paid servants, and twenty slaves. Though their father’s important duties kept him busy, the children had a close relationship with both parents. This was especially true of the youngest children, who grew up after their father had retired from his office as surveyor-general. Colonel Anderson wanted the best for his family, and a little clean fun was always part of his parental recipe.

  The colonel’s sons inherited his love of the hunt. Wild turkeys, ducks, and other birds were their favorite quarry, but during squirrel migration season, killing the incalculable hordes intent on devouring the corn crop was first priority. The object was to shoot the squirrels only in their heads, so as not to ruin the meat. This practice created an entire generation of skilled marksmen in Kentucky who would become famous during the Civil War as “squirrel hunters.” In the fall the Anderson boys would sometimes beg off the long trip to school in bad weather only to gladly accompany the slave Stephen in his efforts to net partridges. In wet weather, partridges abandoned the field for the safety and shelter of the forest floor, aligning themselves in circular coveys and mimicking dead leaves. The boys used many forms of trickery to herd the prey into Stephen’s net. The conquering heroes usually brought back a delicious dinner. When they arrived home, the colonel always insisted that a few partridges be released to ensure a future supply.

  Christmas corresponded with the end of hog-killing season on Bear Grass Creek. Since fresh meat was as rare as hard currency in this part of Kentucky, bacon was “laid up” in great quantities each winter after the first frost. In a typical year, more than a hundred hogs fattened on bluegrass, beech nuts, acorns, and white corn were killed and processed. Besides the feasting that ensued from all of the delectable parts not used for bacon, the most treasured remnant for the children was inedible. Choosing the hogs that would carry the largest bladders became sport and science among both the children of Soldier’s Retreat and their slave accomplices. The pig bladder was the key enabler of their favorite Christmas tradition. Sons, daughters, and slave children waited impatiently for the butcher to do his duty. Once they were awarded their treasured organ, they proceeded to blow air into its lower orifice until it became, in the best cases, a balloon larger than their own heads. The ha
rd work accomplished, the proud owner of the inflated pig bladder had their mother, Sarah, inscribe it with the child’s name and hang it to dry in her special locked closet. The wait for Christmas morning was excruciating. When the joyous day finally arrived, the little scamps grabbed their pig bladders, positioned themselves outside the doors and windows of the older members of the family, and punctured the balloons. It sounded like a small cannon. Following the cacophony, the children, white and black, would cry out, “My Christmas Gift, Sister!” or “Christmas Giff, my ole Massa!”

  Joy was plentiful on the Anderson plantation where innumerable delights awaited the curious and social Charley. Melon season was one of the year’s highlights, and Colonel Anderson took especial pride in his annual bounty of cantaloupes and watermelons. Each day at exactly noon, Charley’s father assembled family and guests to enjoy the treats that he had hand-picked himself at first light and sent by gardener or slave to the springhouse for cooling. Their small vineyard, like their large apple orchard, produced wonderful fruit but “abominable wines.” The rural life was one of young Charley’s earliest passions. As an adult, he would yearn to return to these days of simple farm pleasures.

  After supper, the patriarch of Soldier’s Retreat would take his customary walk down an allée of locust and walnut trees to a massive yellow poplar, eight feet in diameter and more than one hundred feet tall. During these walks, father and children would talk about far-ranging topics. The colonel loved his children and they worshipped him. The family’s comfortable lifestyle lent itself to the sharing of many intimate parental moments during which plenty of advice was gleaned. Lessons in duty and morality were tops on Colonel Anderson’s list. His codes were strict, and he enforced the rules. One such rule was the colonel’s insistence that his children avoid too frequent or intimate associations with the slaves. Given the daily interactions between blacks and whites on the plantation and the colonel’s fairness to all his dependents, heeding this admonishment was nearly impossible.