The Lost Gettysburg Address (10 page)

The summer had been a scorcher. Temperatures rose to 110
degrees in northern Texas on the afternoon of July 8, and several large
fires broke out. The blazes burned most of downtown Dallas to the
ground, razed half the town square in Denton, and destroyed a store
in Pilot Point. At first, spontaneous combustion and the recent
introduction of phosphorous matches were deemed the likely cause of
these unfortunate events. One man, however, saw political
opportunity among the ashes. Four days after the fires, the editor of the
Dallas
Herald
,
Charles R. Pryor, wrote explosive letters to state leaders and
newspaper editors. He suggested that the fires had been started by
recently expelled abolitionist preachers and their black friends as
part of a widespread conspiracy to destroy the entire state. He called
the supposed plot “a regular invasion, and a real war.” Pryor’s
letters were printed in newspapers across the state. Many
communities formed vigilance committees to capture the alleged instigators.
Despite the absence of any evidence that the fires were set by anyone,
local lawmen looked the other way while gangs of citizens lynched an
estimated one hundred innocent blacks and whites. The panic abated
by September, just in time for the presidential election. Southern
extremists used what they euphemistically called “the Texas Troubles”
to inflame sectional passions, painting
Abraham Lincoln as an
abolitionist whose Republican Party was behind the events.
¹⁵

Emotions ran so high in San Antonio in the months before the
presidential contest that local Unionists like Anderson could not
safely promote their candidates in public. In August a courageous
twenty-three-year-old Unionist named
James P. Newcomb stepped
up to the task. He started a Union paper called the
Alamo Express
.
In its pages Anderson and other Union men could express their
political views through the voice of the young editor. Anderson’s motto
in the 1860 presidential election was simple: “Anything to defeat
Lincoln.
Almost
anything to defeat Breckenridge.” He believed that
the triumph of either sectional party spelled almost certain
disunion. Thus he followed his brother Larz in supporting
John Bell of
Tennessee and
Edward Everett of Massachusetts in the newly
imagined Constitutional Union Party. Even
Stephen A. Douglas, whom
Anderson had despised as the agent behind the repeal of the
Missouri
Compromise, was preferable to the sectional candidates. The
diminishing Union circle in San Antonio waited with apprehension as the
election of Lincoln became a foregone conclusion.
¹⁶

T
HE DAY AFTER THE NEWS
of Abraham Lincoln’s election
reached San Antonio, handbills appeared on walls and fences
around town. The posters called for all Breckenridge men to
assemble in Alamo Square and consider next steps in the wake of this
momentous event. Within a few days a second notice appeared extending
the invitation to all citizens of Bexar County. Unaware that a
meeting was scheduled,
Charles Anderson rode into town the morning
of the rally to purchase supplies at George W. Caldwell’s store.
Excitement ran high. Several Union men gathered at the store and
urged him to stay and speak at the meeting that evening. Anderson’s
conscience would not allow him to refuse. Forgoing his usual meticulous
preparation, this speech would have to come straight from the
heart.
¹

Local secessionists fixed the agenda, but the Unionists had their
own plan for the meeting. Celebrated Methodist preacher Dr. Jesse
Boring began the assembly with a secessionist speech that was as
measured and dispassionate as it was firm and confident. He
argued that the Union was in effect already dissolved. In the middle
of Boring’s address, Union men raised the national banner on a
flagpole behind the stage, and the crowd erupted in cheers. As soon as
Boring concluded his remarks, prearranged calls for Anderson came
from the crowd. Anderson felt inspired with “the most inflamed,
indignant, outraged specimen of old Clay temper and Patriotism.” He
calmly ascended the ladder to the stage as if he had been the featured
speaker.

Almost no one in the audience had heard Anderson speak in public.
Before he launched into a refutation of
Boring’s central theme,
Anderson reminded the audience that he was born and reared in a
slaveholding family. He said that his time in the North had given
him a broad perspective and a more objective view of the sectional
issues. With no political allegiances or entanglements to sway him,
Anderson argued that he could divine the truth in this critical
matter. He implored his audience to take a deep breath and consider the
gravity of the decision they faced. “Have sectional partisans finally
dared
to make, or devise, an assault upon this beloved and most
glorious Union, which our fathers of the South and the North shed their
united blood to cement and establish?” This was not a popular
revolt that was brewing in Texas and other Southern states, according
to Anderson. It was a power grab by unscrupulous politicians who
wanted to establish their own separate government based on slavery.

If the Union really is dissolved, Anderson asked, what happens
next? Do they return to the Lone Star Republic? Should Texans form
an alliance with a confederation of Southern states that did not yet
exist? “In nature,” he explained, “there are no lone stars. They
cluster and constellate.” The former Republic of Texas “darted upwards
with the speed of a comet” to join with the other United States in its
constitutional system. Would they just as rapidly abandon this course
without just cause? The idea of a Southern constellation of states was
equally abhorrent and unwarranted, according to Anderson. Despite
the hype and fear mongering from the fire-eaters, neither Lincoln nor
the Republican Party had espoused, in words or platform, any desire
to interfere with the institution of slavery where it was already
established. To say otherwise, as secessionists claimed, was to create a
pretext for disunion based on “the figments of a heated and diseased
imagination.”

A voice in the crowd demanded that they hear “no more of these
Black Republican arguments,” but Anderson was just warming up.
“Nor am I coward enough to fear such taunts, and to prevent me from
boldly denouncing such statements,” the speaker exclaimed, “when
used for such unholy purposes. I have, I say, met and resented assault
in other crowds, where to defend your rights, required, at least, real
manhood.” This may have been true, but Anderson had never made
such bold statements under such dangerous circumstances. He tried
to appear nonpartisan by enumerating the many hostile actions that
abolitionist radicals in the North had taken against Southern states.
He chastised Massachusetts for repeatedly nullifying fugitive slave
laws. This was cause for righteous indignation, Anderson admitted,
but not for national suicide.

Anderson was not above using fear tactics himself when his beloved
Union was at risk. If Southerners opt for disunion, he maintained,
they must be prepared for disastrous consequences. “Could we then
hold three millions of our slaves in their proper bondage and subjection
with our left hands, whilst we should smite their pale faced allies
with our right?” This was a shrewd attempt to turn existing fears of
slave insurrection against the very fire-eaters who had created them.
He begged his listeners not to deplore Northern fanaticism while
ignoring the same dangerous folly at home. Northern extremists could
not trample the Constitution and its explicit protection of the South’s
peculiar institution. Southern extremists must not use lies and distortion
to foment revolution where no proximate cause existed. “Must
the true, permanent, invaluable interests of the Southern people,” he
asked, “be forever made a sacrifice to mere politics?”

Boring’s tired assertion that the Constitution gave each state the
right to secede for any reason was easy fodder for Anderson’s sharp
wit. The mere thought of such a no-fault divorce in a bond of national
matrimony was unthinkable in nineteenth-century America.
“Secession,” Anderson explained, “was what General Jackson
proclaimed it: only revolution.” He finished his speech with the same
passionate and eloquent appeal for the Union that his former Ohio
neighbors had so often heard. “Let us look again on that banner
of beauty and glory,” Anderson pleaded. “Oh! May this flag of our
Father’s Union—our Union—no sister star bedimmed or gone rayless
and lost in outer darkness, our whole constellation complete. Oh!
May it thus stand and remain the most loved and treasured legacy to
our latest posterity, co-existent with the earth, the air, the very sun
himself.” The Germans and Irish in the crowd, who had cowered in
fear of being branded abolitionists, burst into cheers as Anderson
walked from the stage. The Union banner fluttered in the moonlight.
The celebration soon died down as the next scheduled speaker took
the stand.

Colonel John A. Wilcox, a former Methodist preacher turned
Know-Nothing politician, resumed the tirade against the supposed
plans of Lincoln’s abolitionist allies. Unlike
Boring, Wilcox was a
bombastic fire-eater of the first stripe. His role in the proceedings
was to excite the secessionists. He attacked Anderson and all appeals
to a conservative path forward with ferocious fury. Wilcox made
point after point, ending with references to “the gentleman” from
Ohio. Phrases like “abolition politicians,” “stealing niggers,” and
“nigger equality in railroad cars” dominated his harangue. Wilcox’s
supporters gathered around the stage and shouted in chorus with
each charge: “This no cause for secession? The gentleman from Ohio
says not.” When the colonel finally accused Anderson of being in
friendly alliance with Ohio’s most infamous abolitionists, Charles
lost his composure. Fuming with indignation, he rushed the stage
and pushed his way to the foot of the ladder, intending to physically
assault Wilcox for this egregious insult. Fortunately, Daniel Story,
a friend and fellow rancher, grabbed Anderson and prevented him
from starting a melee.

With bloodshed narrowly averted, Union supporters broke up
the meeting by taking the stand and preventing the next scheduled
speaker,
Christopher C. Upson, from addressing the crowd. They
called instead for
Samuel A. Maverick, long considered to be a Union
man, to take the stage. Maverick finally acceded to the wishes of the
crowd but disappointed many by siding with Boring and Wilcox. The
time had come for secession, Maverick admitted. Some Union men
called for
Judge Isaiah A. Paschall, but it was past midnight and the
meeting was over. Unionists signaled a band to strike up “The
Star-Spangled Banner” and marched through the town singing till the wee
hours of the morning. The Union celebration in San Antonio,
however, did not last long.

Anderson’s speech to the citizens of Bexar County made national
headlines. Lincoln and his advisers praised the oration as eloquent,
courageous, and truthful but were concerned that it was not vindictive
enough toward the South. “It distributes too equally and too
justly both blame and censure,” said
publisher George W. Pendleton,
paraphrasing the president-elect’s camp. Despite his reservations,
Pendleton ordered six thousand copies of Anderson’s speech to be
printed and distributed to Congress and the public. Before his speech
at the Alamo, Anderson had always acted on the principle of unswerving
loyalty to his country. After the speech, he became not just a national
figure but also a potential tool of the Lincoln administration.
²

C
HARLES ANDERSON’S TEXAS EXPERIMENT WAS
an abject
failure. “I am dead broke,” he complained to
Rufus King on
December 7. Since his bank account was overdrawn, Anderson
resolved to sell his cattle, lay off two of his vaqueros, and halt
construction on his house. The political crisis made loans almost
impossible to procure. Without a circle of wealthy friends to support him,
Anderson had few options. He begged King to get him two
thousand dollars on a twelve-month term, even if it meant mortgaging his
Dayton, Ohio, property. He owed fifteen hundred dollars on the
former arsenal property and his creditors were not inclined to wait. On
the political front, the excitement of the past month had died down.
What emerged was an interesting political alignment. The
non-slave-holders were pushing for secession, according to Anderson, while 70
percent of slaveholders supported the Union. Anderson hoped that
the Union could be saved. He could not imagine the depth of the
conspiracy in motion against it.
¹

The Knights of the Golden Circle (KGC) were already known to
Anderson when he gave his speech in Alamo Square. Founder George
Bickley lived in Cincinnati until he was chased out in the late 1850s.
As Anderson gazed down from the stage on the night of the Alamo
meeting, he saw blue cockade badges adorning numerous hats and
lapels. The Knights had organized in the mid-1850s as a secret
society promoting slave states in Mexico, Central America, and the
Caribbean. Members wanted U.S. slaveholding states to secede, join
these new territories, and form a new nation. The KGC proved to be
the match that lit the fire of Texas secession. San Antonio became the
headquarters for Knights of the Golden Circle activities in Texas by
1859, and every substantial town had a branch called a “castle.” U.S.
military experts claimed that the Knights could call up more than
eight thousand men on a few days’ notice. Their discipline was said
to be stricter than that of the legitimate army. Most of the key players
guiding the Texas secession drama were members or had close
connections with the covert militia.
²