At stake in the terrible conflict, Anderson insisted, was a cause much greater than a particular political or military leader. This was a people’s war fought for sacred principles. With characteristic audacity, the excited speaker faced Lincoln and presented a chilling scenario. “Let them seize and destroy our National City—its wood into ashes and its marble into sand. Let them imprison—hang—burn our President with all the heads and hands of the departments. . . . Yet we are still a nation. Foreign monarchy must understand—Domestic Oligarchy must re-learn, that our National Being flows on forever in a stream of moral principles and not through any chain of printed deeds or written charters.” This was a macabre scene painted by an excited partisan. It was certainly an Anderson original. Lincoln and his cabinet members may have squirmed in their pews, but the audience cheered “wildly.”
Survival of the republican ideal, Anderson claimed, was the nation’s God-given destiny. The course of nature will not change “to please a junta of insane slavery oligarchs,” the speaker assured the crowd. Society cannot go backward “into the chaos of black barbarism and of red despotism, at the bidding of these puny and palsied Canutes of South Carolina and Mississippi,” Anderson roared. The assembly broke into immense cheering in response to this creative insult to their arch enemies. Applause and shouting continued for several minutes. When he resumed, Anderson sketched a convincing picture of the everyday soldier. They died, not for political purposes, nor to free the slaves, but “to save the nation’s life.” Their homespun honesty and humble nobility made an effective contrast with the monstrous personalities that Anderson had just finished inventing.10
Once he had gained his audience’s attention, Anderson repeated a familiar refrain, lauding America as an original and exceptional new creation of civil government. Disunion by the traitors destroyed not only the best government ever created by man but also disrupted commerce and threatened to end what had been unprecedented prosperity. The mere suggestion that the two sections could exist as separate nations with common borders and not end up as two warring, military regimes was preposterous. The ensuing military republic in the North would be only slightly less evil than the military oligarchy that already existed in the Confederate States. The defeat of Vallandigham should have put that issue to rest, but Anderson had an inkling that the fantasy of a peaceable separation might resurface. The lion could only lie down with the lamb if the lion became like a lamb, not the other way around. The cheers from the audience resumed.
As the address was winding down, Anderson could not resist the impulse to offer his opinion on the most controversial topic of the day: the emancipation of the slaves. He had committed political suicide in public so many times that he had lost all fear of retribution. Lincoln and especially the radical abolitionist Seward must have braced themselves at the broaching of the subject. The Democrats had been playing the race card for many years. As long as the opposition press tried to claim that the war’s sole purpose was abolition, the Peace Party would be a force to reckon with.
The Copperheads argued that general emancipation would release a flood of black barbarism and cheap labor and create a huge dependent pauper class in the North. These predictions were valid, according to Anderson, only if a separate slave nation were to be established alongside the free North. If slavery were to be abolished throughout the South, on the other hand, the freedmen would have little incentive to pick up and move. The speaker said that he was willing to “tolerate the master-disease and crime within the Union” for a time until it gradually ran its course. This was the position favored by Lincoln earlier in his political career. The key was reunion, with or without slavery, according to Anderson. That said, he shared the fears of the vast majority of his fellow Ohio citizens. They could not abide a sudden influx of black faces taking up residence in the house next door.
“So seriously do I estimate those evils,” Anderson stated, “that if all other causes of war against the establishment and recognition of the Southern Confederacy of slave states could be obviated and removed, I do really think that these dangers from having our land converted into a vast Cloaca Maxima [sewer] for their overflowing filth, would constitute a just and sufficient cause to war, to the end of the century.” Many people thought the same way but precious few Union or Republican politicians dared to speak such words in a public forum. Anderson was a powerful orator and could be as vicious as a pit bull when the occasion demanded such vitriol. In politics, however, he was loose cannon.
Anderson’s speech lasted less than an hour. Despite its controversial ending, he received universal praise from those in attendance. Lincoln shook Anderson’s hand and congratulated him on his fine effort. Seward agreed. Brough and Anderson left with the presidential party on the 6:30 p.m. train to Washington. The Ohio delegation passed a resolution of thanks for the colonel’s “able and eloquent” address and requested that he publish it for posterity. Excerpts of the speech appeared in a few newspapers, such as the Cincinnati Commercial and the Springfield Republican, but the entire speech was never printed. The explanation of S. A. Hines, editor of the Cincinnati Gazette, was typical. The Everett speech had taken up so much space that it left little room for Anderson’s words. When Anderson looked for the manuscript thirty years later, he could not find it.
The three addresses at Gettysburg were not a random collection of individual orations. They were a carefully planned and constructed ensemble designed to accomplish different yet complimentary purposes. Each speaker intended to eulogize to some degree. Everett’s style was deliberate. He sought to educate his audience. Lincoln was inspirational. He intended to elevate the war to a higher moral plane. Anderson was provocative. His address was designed to motivate, even agitate the crowd to support a vigorous prosecution of the war. Lincoln’s words entered the canon of American scripture where they remained, timeless and permanent. Everett’s speech was printed and then largely forgotten. Anderson’s oration had an even shorter exposure, disappearing from sight immediately and remaining buried for nearly 150 years.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Unfortunate Misstep
ON THE TRAIN FROM DAYTON to Columbus in January 1864, just two months after his speech at Gettysburg, Charles Anderson reflected on his future. He was about to assume one of the most meaningless jobs in government. The lieutenant governor-elect had responded to the call of duty in yet another critical hour of his beloved, fragile Union. He planned to serve his term, assist the new governor in sustaining the war effort, and enjoy time with old friends and rivals in the state legislature. A Union military victory appeared inevitable. Anderson wanted to use this interlude to prepare for the next chapter in his life. He had no idea where that road might lead.
Anderson gave a brief, reserved address to the Ohio state legislature at the inaugural ceremonies, occupied his new office, and went to work. He found the administrative workload stifling. His lack of any real authority made the job mundane and trivial. John Brough was busy raising an additional thirty thousand volunteers in reply to President Lincoln’s request for more troops. Anderson was relegated to menial tasks. He relieved his boredom frequently at his brother Larz’s house in Cincinnati. He spent an entire day there dressed in full theatrical costume, channeling the lead character for a local production of Macbeth. After several agonizing months in a job he detested, Anderson wondered what he was supposed to do next. Union Party bosses had their own ideas.1
Despite his previous pronouncements, Governor Brough fell in line to support Lincoln’s reelection bid. He had expressed differences with the president for many years, but the war persisted, and he was determined to stand behind the commander in chief. His lieutenant governor, on the other hand, had a long record of political independence and would not kowtow to the leader of any party. Anderson was aghast when the radical abolitionists co-opted the president’s agenda and turned a war for the salvation of the Union into a war to free the slaves. The ramifications of this growing crusade were vast. Many working-class
Americans recoiled at the thought that their sons and brothers were dying to free the Negro. Once the war was over, many feared that a veritable flood of newly freed slaves would leave the devastated South and invade the industrial North, bringing with them a debased standard of morality and competing with whites for work. Americans had also grown weary of a war where the result seemed decided, but there was no immediate end in sight.2
Anderson worried about what the postwar nation would be like. Divisions in the country and even in his own party made Lincoln’s reelection, perhaps even his renomination, appear doubtful. Radicals like New York newspaper editor Horace Greeley were not satisfied with the president’s moderate stances on abolition and reconstruction and called for an alternate Republican candidate. Lincoln’s own secretary of the treasury, Salmon P. Chase, plotted to become the nominee. In April the U.S. Senate passed the Thirteenth Amendment abolishing slavery in the United States and areas under its control. Lincoln was eventually nominated in early June. The Democrats responded in August by selecting General George McClellan, who had been relieved of his command by Lincoln earlier in the war. Resurfacing at the Democratic convention in Chicago was none other than Clement Vallandigham, who gave the keynote address and drafted the party platform. Lincoln ignored Vallandigham’s illegal repatriation rather than stir up the expelled Democrat’s most ardent supporters.3
Indiana governor Oliver P. Morton and Ohio Union Party leader Godwin V. Dorsey reached out to Anderson in August, asking him to join Governor Brough in stumping for Lincoln in their states. Anderson refused. He was not satisfied with either candidate. “As for Mr. Lincoln,” he predicted, “he might well attempt to row up the Niagara Chute in a particularly frail birch bark canoe, with a particularly weak feather for a paddle, as to talk about abolishing slavery as a condition for reunion.” Lincoln’s “personal facility in changing course to every last wind” was troubling to Anderson. “It is a cruel duty to declare against my own political friends,” the lieutenant governor declared, “but it is my duty.”4
Anderson underestimated Lincoln’s political genius and paddling ability. McClellan unwittingly helped the president’s cause by refusing to accept the portion of the Democratic platform that represented the war as a failure, thus splitting with the Copperhead faction of the party. But Northern morale was sinking. Lincoln himself told a soldier in late August: “I am going to be beaten, and unless some great change takes place, badly beaten.” While Lincoln and his cabinet laid plans to cooperate with the incoming administration, great news arrived on the telegraph. General Sherman had taken Atlanta on September 2. Everyone on both sides of the great conflict knew what that meant. The way was now clear for the Union Army to march virtually unmolested to Savannah and eventually to South Carolina. Sherman was feted in cities across the North as the greatest general of the century. Even the Richmond Examiner admitted that the fall of Atlanta had come just in time to “save the party of Lincoln from irretrievable ruin.” Two months later. Lincoln won in a landslide.5
Anderson was in an awkward position. Peace Democrats despised him. War Democrats merely tolerated him. Republicans felt betrayed by him. His legendary political independence was wearing thin with all but a few loyal friends. Anderson was still respected for his intellectual prowess, his oratorical skills, and his unimpeachable integrity. On the other hand, he was increasingly seen as inflexible and dogmatic in his own extreme brand of Unionism. He was a political liability. Anderson was certain that he was right. Surely the political power brokers and the people of Ohio would see the truth of his opinions and come to think as he did. In case they did not, however, Anderson began to lay plans for a possible retirement elsewhere.
In January 1865, Larz’s eldest son, Richard Clough Anderson, negotiated the purchase of a large tract of iron mining lands in Lyon County, Kentucky. Charles Anderson imagined he could eventually enjoy a quiet life filled with “intelligent society, books, and agricultural pursuits,” back home in his native state. He needed to defer this dream for at least another year, as his term did not expire until early 1866. Besides, there might be other opportunities coming his way. If he could just get the right people to sponsor him for that long coveted foreign ministry assignment, or even high political office, he might still have a career in politics. Ohio’s lieutenant governor was an unusual talent and still had dozens of powerful allies.6
A gracious way to escape the tedium of the lieutenant governorship and fulfill a lifelong ambition was to make yet another attempt to secure a foreign diplomatic post. Anderson went after this goal in earnest. One position that he especially desired was minister to Spain, which had been open since Gustav Koerner had resigned in July 1864. Koerner could not reconcile his minuscule salary with the heavy financial obligations at the Spanish court. Anderson conducted a furious letter-writing campaign, enlisting postmaster general William Dennison, a former governor of Ohio, as well as Thomas Corwin, late minister to Mexico, in the effort. Attorney general James Speed, a boyhood pal, and judge advocate general Joseph Holt jumped on the bandwagon. Speed wrote that he had seen Secretary of State Seward on Anderson’s behalf, but that the few available positions were already spoken for. Ohio congressman Rutherford B. Hayes told Anderson that he would urge Lincoln to find a post for him. A last ditch effort by another faithful friend, Ohio senator John Sherman, took the matter directly to the president, but Lincoln refused to countermand Seward’s intentions. Three days later, Lincoln appointed Senator John Parker Hale of New Hampshire to the post. Anderson could hardly argue that selection, as Hale was an accomplished politician and former Free Soil candidate for president. He was also the father of the beautiful Lucy Lambert Hale, who was secretly engaged to a famous actor named John Wilkes Booth. Dennison and Sherman went to see Seward together three days after the Hale appointment, but the secretary claimed there were no vacancies. Anderson, in his zeal for a plum foreign assignment, just could not take a hint.7
Four days after General Lee’s surrender on April 9, 1865, Anderson and his brother Robert attended a ceremony to restore the American flag at Fort Sumter, where Robert had surrendered his command after a gallant stand exactly four years earlier. The event was planned shortly after Sherman had captured Charleston in February. Hundreds of ebullient dignitaries were on scene. With the war over, there were several reasons to celebrate. Robert raised the banner that one of his sergeants had risked his life to keep flying during the bombardment. It was hard to tell what was most battered: the cherished flag, torn and tattered by shrapnel, or Robert Anderson himself, broken and worn-out from defending his country in numerous wars. As the remnant flag stiffened in the breeze, cheers arose from the spectators while cannons on island and shore boomed a victory salute. The crowd had no way of knowing that back in Washington, shortly after the Sumter flag was restored, the man who bore the weight of more than six hundred thousand dead on his conscience had entered Ford’s Theatre for his own appointment with bloody destiny.8
The stunned North collapsed into mourning at the news of Lincoln’s assassination. Governors and municipal leaders planned the largest funeral train in U.S. history, passing through seven states to Lincoln’s final resting place in Springfield, Illinois. Governors Brough, Morton of Indiana, and Stone of Iowa accompanied the body on its twelve-day, 1,654-mile journey. William G. Deschler, chairman of the ceremonies at Columbus, offered Anderson the honor of delivering the eulogy to the slain president. He declined. Although he and Lincoln had not always been on the best of terms, Anderson would soon realize that the untimely death of Abraham Lincoln was a great tragedy for the South, as Lincoln’s own scheme for conciliatory reconstruction died with him.9
It was business as usual at first. President Andrew Johnson delivered an amnesty proclamation on May 29, signaling his intention to honor Lincoln’s plans and place control of Southern political affairs back in the hands of those who had wielded power before the war. With the conflict over, Republicans and Democrats had much less to squabble about. Even Vallandigha
m suggested that the Democrats should get behind the new president’s reconstruction plans to help heal the nation’s gaping wounds. He accepted the fact that slavery was dead. The issue climbing to the forefront of political debate, however, was the political status of black Americans, in both the North and the South. Should they be allowed to vote and become full citizens? This issue, Vallandigham declared, should be settled by each state. He was speaking not only for the Democrats but for an overwhelming majority of whites, including Anderson, who held that same opinion.
Anderson had first gone public on the issue of black suffrage in June 1864, in a speech to the Montgomery County Republican Party nominating convention. The lieutenant governor’s resolutions did not mince words. “We are utterly opposed to the enfranchisement of this class,” the resolution read, “neither because they are black, nor because they have been slaves merely, but solely because, that having been so recently slaves, we know that as a mass, and upon the average, they are not capable and worthy of this exalted function.” Some remembered Anderson’s celebrated 1849 speech declaring Anglo-Saxon supremacy a myth and cried foul. How could he assert that blacks were not inherently inferior to whites and then deny them the vote? These critics had not read the speech carefully. One of the central tenets of Anderson’s argument was that any people, given the proper conditions and circumstances, could rise to dominance over a less fortunate population. Slaves had been denied basic rights and education for generations. They were not yet ready for such an important responsibility.
The Lost Gettysburg Address Page 18