The Lost Gettysburg Address
Gettysburg
ADDRESS
Charles Anderson’s
Civil War Odyssey
B-List History
SANTA BARBARA, CALIFORNIA
Copyright © 2015 by David T. Dixon
All rights reserved
B-List History, Santa Barbara, California
No part of this document may be reproduced
or transmitted in any form without written
permission of David T. Dixon.
Cover design by Peter O’Connor
Book design and production by BookMatters
Maps by Hal Jespersen
Printed in the United States of America
ISBN 978-0-9861551-0-9 (hardcover)
ISBN 978-0-9861561-1-6 (electronic book)
ISBN 978-0-9861551-2-3 (paperback)
David T. Dixon
P.O. Box 30923
Santa Barbara, CA 93130
davidtdixon.com
To my parents,
William B. and Peggy A. Dixon
INTRODUCTION
:
The Accidental Historian
17
Severing the Head of the Snake
18
The Pit Bull and the President
AFTERWORD
:
American Sacred Scripture Reconsidered
APPENDIX
:
Charles Anderson’s Gettysburg Address
The Accidental Historian
A
NTHROPOLOGIST ROB TOLLEY
gasped when he realized
what he held in his hands.
One bright summer day in 2002, several tattered cardboard
boxes had arrived at
Bartley Skinner’s remote Wyoming ranch.
Skinner’s eyesight was failing, so he asked his friend Tolley to help
him sort through the collection. The presumed author of this morass
of nineteenth-century material was Skinner’s great-grandfather,
an obscure Ohio governor named Charles Anderson. As Anderson’s
saga emerged from a mountain of loose ephemera, the anthropologist
became an accidental historian.
Tolley toiled for several years to preserve the Anderson legacy. He
painstakingly identified, cataloged, and donated pieces of the
collection to various archives and historical societies. After sifting through
nearly four hundred crumbling, forgotten documents, Tolley was still
puzzled by one particular artifact. A thirty-nine-page manuscript
written in dark brown ink on a gray-lined legal pad appeared to be
a
speech written at some point during the Civil War, yet no title or
date hinted at its secret. Even after the untitled speech was gifted to
the Ohio Historical Society, Tolley continued to try to unravel its
mysterious origins.
The breakthrough came when Tolley found an old journal article
featuring Anderson’s participation in the Gettysburg Memorial
ceremonies on November 19, 1863.
Edward Everett of Massachusetts,
one of the era’s most celebrated orators, was the keynote speaker at
the consecration. His two-hour address was too long to remember.
Lincoln’s two-minute masterpiece was impossible to forget. Following
the dedication, Lincoln and the other dignitaries attended a rally at
Gettysburg Presbyterian Church, where
Charles Anderson, then a
well-known orator in his own right, thrilled the audience with a fiery
speech.
Everett’s oration was published soon after the event.
Lincoln’s
brief address was destined to become sacred scripture to generations
of American schoolchildren. The president congratulated Anderson
on his fine speech, and the Ohio delegation requested that it be
printed. That never happened. Curiously, biographical summaries
of Anderson ignore the speech. His great-grandson, Bartley Skinner,
never spoke of it. Anderson himself apparently did not consider it
significant. Only after Tolley read excerpts of the oration published
in contemporary newspapers did he realize that the mystery speech
included in that box of ephemera was indeed the long-lost original
manuscript of Anderson’s address at Gettysburg.
Tolley was stunned. Had he really stumbled upon an important
piece of Gettysburg history in the middle of the Wyoming wilderness?
As an anthropologist and archaeologist on the faculty of Indiana
University East, Tolley subscribed to the notion that such significant
discoveries are the result of careful research, detailed planning, and
diligent fieldwork. The more he thought about the history of
archaeology, however, the more he realized that many explorers happened
upon their discoveries by accident or coincidence.
How Tolley came to know the Skinners, and to eventually become
the custodian of Charles Anderson’s papers, was pure serendipity.
Years before his chance
discovery of Anderson’s speech, Tolley and
his climbing party had just finished an expedition in the Wind River
mountain range in western Wyoming. After weeks spent traversing
peaks and glaciers in this rugged wilderness, the weary explorers
could think of little else but ending their monotonous routine of
freeze-dried meals with a celebratory feast. Locals claimed that the
Fort William Guest Ranch near Pinedale had the best steaks around.
They warned, however, that it was a little off the “beaten path.”
Tolley and his intrepid band had almost given up hope as they
traversed a series of gravel roads, passing through numerous cattle
guards and gates. They finally wandered into the place at the end of a
long dirt track five miles from town in the posted ranchlands. Bartley
and
Rose Skinner, a spry and elderly couple, greeted them. Grilling
steaks over an open aspen wood fire, Skinner sipped gin and spun
tales of his great-grandfather, Governor Anderson. The hearty fare
and warm fellowship was a pleasant end to an arduous journey, and
the ranch became a regular stop during Tolley’s frequent outings in
Wyoming. As the years passed, Tolley and his family grew close to
the Skinners.
Fort William was a virtual museum shrine to Bartley Skinner’s
ancestors. Paintings, military artifacts, and family relics were his prized
possessions. Guests perused Anderson’s personal library, complete
with the governor’s penciled notes written in the margins of nearly
every volume. The hidden treasures at the ranch, however, were documents
that helped tell the story of
Charles Anderson’s eventful life.
Anderson was a leader among a class of Southern men whom Lincoln
viewed as critical to the preservation of the Union. A Kentuckian
by birth like the president, Anderson also shared Lincoln’s great
obsession. Anderson may have been the most zealous of all Southern
Unionists. By chance or design, he kept turning up at critical events,
both in the run-up to war and during the conflict itself. His oration at
Gettysburg was just one of a series of dramatic encounters that kept
the Anderson name in the press and in the minds of Americans in
both the North and the South, particularly after Anderson’s brother
Robert surrendered Fort Sumter.
Lincoln’s subsequent martyrdom meant that his masterful
address was destined to be carved in stone and memorialized as secular
scripture, while the featured orations of Edward Everett and Charles
Anderson were largely forgotten. Anderson was just one of many
important Civil War figures whose stories were overshadowed by a
public consumed with the legacies of Abraham Lincoln,
Robert E. Lee,
Ulysses S. Grant, and
Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson. Some of these
stories have yet to be told. They may be lying dormant in a collection
of unread manuscripts in an archive, or in an even less likely location
such as Pinedale, Wyoming, waiting for an enterprising researcher to
uncover their significance.
In 2014, Rob Tolley gave me the opportunity to share in the
excitement of his archival adventure. He asked me to look at a random
assemblage of Anderson’s notes and papers that he had been unable to
identify. Among this heap of material were eight manuscript pages in
Anderson’s own hand. These documents had entire sections crossed
out. Some of the phrases used on these pages sounded familiar. Upon
closer examination, I confirmed that these notes were actually part of
an early draft of Anderson’s Gettysburg oration. Despite the
voluminous studies of this iconic event, to my great delight, fresh surprises
and insights still turn up.
The story of
Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address remains incomplete
even after 150 years. When Anderson’s speech disappeared from view,
part of the context of Lincoln’s words was also lost. By considering
the major orations that came before and after the president’s brief
remarks, one may better understand the purpose of Lincoln’s speech
and the political strategy behind all three addresses in promoting
the administration’s wartime agenda. For a brief instant, Anderson
became famous as a former slave owner who had sacrificed nearly
everything to help save the Union. His remarkable yet almost forgotten
life story helps explain why he shared the spotlight with Lincoln on
such an important day in the middle of the Civil War.
Patriot Legacy
T
HE STORY OF CHARLES ANDERSON
begins with the
memorable experiences of his father,
Richard Clough Anderson, who
became the dominant influence and example in Charles’s life.
The Anderson family had emigrated from Scotland to the Virginia
Colony sometime in the seventeenth century. Born in 1750 at the
family plantation on Gold Mine Creek in Hanover County, Richard
was the third son of Robert Anderson and
Elizabeth Clough. Robert
was an accomplished hunter and spent much of his time in woods
outside of Richmond with his friend John Findley, who owned a pack
of hunting dogs.
Young Richard made due with a tutor and the common schools of
Richmond, while his older brother was in England earning the education
required to manage their father’s Virginia farm. He preferred
to be out chasing game with his father, or simply exploring the
countryside near the James River. Richard surprised his parents when, at
just sixteen years old, he accepted a position in the counting house
of wealthy Richmond merchant
Patrick Coots. Robert Anderson was
appalled. Although Coots was a friend of the family, they considered
the merchant trade to be beneath the son of a gentleman. Richard
ignored his parents’ advice and, within a few years, became a valued
and trusted employee. When Coots needed a reliable man to supervise
his cargo and represent him in overseas transactions, he chose
nineteen-year-old Richard for the important office. It was a dream
job that satisfied the young man’s keen taste for adventure.
1
The
merchant assistant traveled throughout the West Indies, London, and
various European ports, learning the French language that was vital
to conducting international business at the time. On December 16,
1773, Richard Anderson happened to be in Boston Harbor when a
band of protestors, some disguised as Indians, started dumping tea
from the British East India Company into the water. He took little
notice of the incident. He did not understand then how his presence
foreshadowed a series of important moments when happenstance
would place him on the scene of critical events in America’s war of
revolution. Richard returned to Richmond just as the war that would
shape his future was about to begin. Virginians were forced to take
sides in the contest, and the Andersons of Gold Mine were steadfast
to the patriot cause. Their fellow parishioners in St. Paul’s Church
may have had some influence on their allegiance. The minister’s son,
Patrick Henry, was their friend and neighbor. Henry, like Robert
Anderson, was in the middle ranks of the colony’s landed gentry.
His skill and passion as an orator, combined with his radical views,
made him the logical choice as Virginia’s first postcolonial governor
in 1776.