The Lost Gettysburg Address (6 page)

L
ARZ ANDERSON WAS TROUBLED
by what he had observed
over the previous five years. Since
graduating from college,
his youngest brother appeared to be wasting his talents and
squandering a promising legal career. Despite the rare advantages
of a first-rate classical education, superior intelligence, and the fine
examples set by his older
brothers, Charles Anderson lacked diligence
and commitment. By December 1840, Larz could no longer stifle his
opinion. He sent his little brother a long letter with a decidedly
parental tone. He suggested that Charles read a short essay by the English
Baptist minister John Foster titled “Decision of Character.” It was
intended to be a wake-up call to the young attorney. Charles had, by
his own admission, accomplished nothing since he married and
embarked on his chosen profession. Perhaps he had forgotten his father’s
favorite maxim, Larz suggested, “that whatever is worth doing at all,
is worth doing well.”
¹

According to his older brother, Charles spent most of his time
“discoursing and castle-building,” instead of applying himself in earnest.
He was living beyond his means and constantly in debt. Neglecting
his practice with no plans for alternative employment amounted to
a disservice to his family, his community, and his legacy. It was high
time for Larz’s little brother to stop daydreaming and to get serious
about a career. Larz knew that his brother harbored regrets about
his short-lived experiment at farming. If Charles really examined his
conscience, Larz insisted, he would find that agriculture lacked the
excitement and social interaction that he sorely needed. Politics was
an enduring interest of men in the legal profession, and Charles often
wondered if that was his true calling. Larz dismissed the idea. Charles
disliked law because he hated the “low acts” that attorneys often
resorted to in order to win cases. How then, Larz asked, could Charles
possibly stomach “the paltry means, the vile intrigues, the hypocrisy”
of the politician? The elder brother had considerable experience in
both realms. One could be successful in law without sinking to such
levels, Larz reasoned, but “it is next to impossible for the politician
to preserve himself pure, amid the despicable shifts and maneuvers”
that elected officials subject themselves to. “Put it down as certain,”
Larz advised, “that you can never be a politician.”

Larz urged his former ward to do something. “I want a purpose,
an end, a plan,” he pleaded. The plan itself was not nearly as
important as the effort and perseverance behind it. Larz could set Charles
up in Cincinnati, or across the river in Covington, Kentucky, where
the prospects for financial success were good, if Charles could
“exorcise the demon of Politics.” But Charles was firmly rooted in Dayton,
where Eliza’s family property offered at least a small measure of
security in their uncertain financial situation. As for the devil on Charles’s
shoulder, he found that it kept whispering sweet entreaties into his
ear until he could no longer ignore the temptation.

It was his fellow citizens, rather than Satan himself, who demanded
that Charles Anderson become a public figure. From the beginning
of his time in Dayton, he had been actively involved in community
affairs. This was expected of a man of his education and talents. It
was also a virtue that his father had stressed and his siblings honored.
Charles served a term as clerk of Dayton Township, an office he took
on in order to help implement a new common school law. He
commanded the local militia, called the “Dayton Grays,” until his paid
work made holding that position impossible. A year after receiving
Larz’s admonishing letter, Charles succumbed to peer pressure and
agreed to run for the office of Montgomery County prosecuting
attorney. “Tomorrow I begin one of the most disagreeable tasks of my
life,” he wrote to his sister Maria in September 1841. His opponent in
the race was an old mentor and friend,
Judge George B. Holt. Charles
defeated the judge but, like many former and future adversaries,
retained the friendship for the rest of Holt’s life.
²

Despite Charles’s foray into elective office, Larz was not overly
perturbed. His brother’s star was rising in legal circles and the
newfound recognition led to a partnership with successful
Dayton
attorney John Howard. The new partners were a good match. Howard
was one of the most successful practitioners at the Dayton bar. He
was bright, extremely well-read, and possessed a tireless work ethic.
He overcame a slow, awkward manner of speaking by connecting
in an intimate and folksy way with the jury. In many ways, Howard
and Charles made an ideal team. Clients calling on Anderson often
found him absent, as he preferred to sit on the river bank and fish or
tend to his small farm, rather than endure the tedium of office work.
But Charles was magic in front of a jury. The same star qualities that
made him so persuasive in arguing cases before his peers made him
attractive to
political operatives.
³

Charles Anderson was a prototype leader. Tall, handsome, and
articulate, with an engaging personality and a quick wit, he was as
effective in intimate gatherings as he was impressive on the podium.
Anderson was a man of learning and ideas and was not shy to offer
an opinion or take a stand on an issue. He was a public-spirited
citizen whose heart was unquestionably committed to his neighbors and
his countrymen. A man like him did not need to seek office. Such
actions were considered crass and vulgar to a gentleman’s sensibilities.
Rather, the opportunities came to him. Much to Larz’s dismay, when
Charles was called to serve, he rarely resisted.

The seed of Charles Anderson’s political interest had been
germinating since childhood. Like his brother John, the visit of Andrew
Jackson to Soldier’s Retreat when the boys were mere tots made him
an early disciple of Old Hickory. That all changed one summer day
when the fifteen-year-old Charles was in Cincinnati visiting Larz.
His brother brought the college-bound boy to hear a political speech
by a fellow Kentuckian and fierce opponent of Jackson. Charles was
captivated by both the man and his message. After the speech, he had
the opportunity to shake the hand of
Henry Clay. At that moment,
Charles Anderson became a party man and one of the region’s most
ardent followers of Whig principles. He followed Clay and his party
faithfully until his death.
⁴

By 1829, Clay was a titan on the American political scene. His
work on the
Missouri Compromise was critical in keeping the Union
together. The North and South had grown increasingly belligerent
over such issues as banking, tariffs, and slavery. Clay had run for
president twice and did not win his party’s nomination on either
occasion. When the opportunity came to help Clay win the presidency
as the Whig nominee in the summer of 1844, Anderson took down
his shingle and became a full-time politician. It turned out to be a
short career.
⁵

Usually a key battleground state in national elections, Ohio was
no exception in the contest of 1844. Determined to help Ohio fulfill
what they felt was its political destiny as kingmaker, the state Whig
machine trotted out an impressive ticket of candidates for the
legislature and statewide office. Their mission, in addition to reversing
recent Democratic Party gains, was to ensure that Clay carried Ohio.
Voting a straight-line party ticket was encouraged in these days.
Local candidates often made the difference in the decision to vote
for a presidential hopeful whom very few had seen or heard. When
Whigs in Montgomery and Warren Counties nominated Anderson
for the state senate, they knew that they were securing a devoted and
effective spokesman for Clay. The previous year, Anderson had lost
his bid for the Whig nomination to the U.S. House of Representatives
to his good friend
Robert C. Schenck. This time, however, he did not
disappoint.

Charles Anderson was a dynamic force on the stump, traipsing all
over the state to assist in the Whig Party crusade. At one point, an
exasperated
Eliza complained to her mother-in-law that her husband
was “out electioneering again.” She hated politics and yearned to see
Anderson return from the road.
⁶
His extraordinary efforts paid off,
as he was elected by a comfortable majority. Whigs dominated the
state senate but were badly outnumbered in the house. Whig
gubernatorial candidate
Mordecai Bradley outpolled popular Democrat
David Tod by a mere thirteen-hundred votes. Clay won Ohio’s
twenty-three electoral votes by a margin barely exceeding six thousand
with more than three hundred thousand ballots cast. The celebration
was short-lived. After all the returns were in, the grand prize had
eluded the Kentuckian yet again.
James K. Polk was reelected
president. Clay’s destiny was to be one of the greatest American political
leaders to never win the nation’s highest office.

Newly
elected Senator Anderson traveled to Columbus in December
1844 to begin a short and stormy stint in the legislature. The great
national issue of Texas annexation loomed large, overshadowing state
business. Some Whig hardliners even suggested that such an event,
which Polk would surely accomplish, might be grounds for
immediate disunion. Although Anderson strongly opposed annexation, he
was not in that radical camp. The freshman state senator focused on
his new role, immersing himself in typical Whig concerns: railroads,
turnpikes, and benevolent institutions. While he achieved some minor
success in these efforts, Anderson took a position of conscience that
was so controversial and so offensive to most of his constituents, that
it would seal his fate as a one-term senator while he was still learning
his way around the statehouse. A bomb exploding on the floor of the
senate might have caused less noise than that which Anderson created
near the start of the Forty-Third Ohio General Assembly.

Many whites feared a sudden influx of what they perceived to be
ignorant, immoral escaped slaves and free blacks into the free states of
the West. This concern led many border states to pass a series of codes
restricting the freedom of their black neighbors. The
Ohio “Black
Laws” were enacted in 1803, shortly after the territory achieved
statehood. A wide range of sanctions required free blacks to register with
local authorities and to provide proof of freedom upon demand. The
statutes proscribed harsh penalties for harboring undocumented
persons of color. Technically free, the black population of Ohio had few
of the privileges of white residents. Being exempt from the yoke of
slavery did not mean that one was a full-fledged citizen. The status of
nominally free black residents was troubling to Anderson. His own
views on race were a confused muddle of conflicting emotions,
experiences, and principles. He was certainly not a radical abolitionist like
firebrand fellow senator
Benjamin F. Wade, yet his own moral
principles urged him to find ways to ameliorate the poor condition of these
“wretched beings.” Anderson resolved to take action.

He proposed a measure that would do away with one provision of
Ohio’s codes for black people. Statutes prohibited blacks from
testifying in civil and criminal cases. Eliminating one provision that
so clearly stood in the way of fair trials might be a first step toward
gradually eroding the entire odious collection of laws. The senate
erupted in heated debate. Anderson gave an eloquent speech on the
senate floor that sent the opposition press into hysteria. “Niggers!
Niggers!! Niggers!!!” screeched the Dayton
Western Empire
, whose
editors accused Anderson of turning his back on his Kentucky
heritage and engaging in “Niggerology.” Helped by an overwhelming
Whig majority, the bill passed on February 20, 1845, and was
referred to the house. It was a dead letter when it arrived, however,
given the thirty-two to four seat dominance of the Democrats there.
The annexation of Texas drowned out all other news just two weeks
later, and Anderson’s effort was all but forgotten.
⁷

One man who did not forget was rising political star
Salmon P.
Chase. Chase was disappointed that Anderson had refused to align
himself with the new Liberty Party. He wrote the young state senator,
chastising him for not having the same kind of zeal against the
extension of slavery as he did in opposing the
Black Laws. Liberty Party
editors sneered in silence at such Whig actions they felt avoided the
more pressing issues of the day. Anderson ignored them. As long as
Clay was alive, Anderson would remain his loyal disciple and follow
his lead.
⁸

Unaccustomed to working every day in the public eye, Anderson
simply toiled in the statehouse until he ruined his health. The asthma
that plagued him his entire life was back, despite an arsenic solution
that his doctor had prescribed. What Charles needed was some time
away in a healthier climate. Friends recommended a sea voyage, and
Anderson jumped at the idea. He was granted a leave of absence and
left Columbus in early March. The trip turned out to be much more
than an extended period of convalescence. It was the trip of a lifetime.

Anderson spent nearly six months alone in
Europe indulging his
insatiable desire to advance his learning in art, history, and nature.
Landing in Barcelona in late April 1845, his sojourn took him through
northern Spain, southern France, and down the Rhone River. He
cruised in the Mediterranean Sea, visiting Italy, Greece, and Turkey.
He met with the sultan twice in Constantinople. From the Black
Sea, Anderson ventured up the Danube River through Germany and
northern France, ending his long odyssey in London. The trip
exceeded his grandest expectations and kindled a lifelong dream of a
diplomatic appointment. By October the dreamer had nearly run out
of money, and responsibilities beckoned back home. When the Ohio
legislature opened session in January, Anderson returned to his seat
and resumed his place in the middle of controversy.
⁹