The Lost Gettysburg Address (13 page)

McCulloch ordered Anderson to be removed to
Captain William
T. Mechling’s line of camp sentinels and forbade him correspondence
or outside visitors. Although the terms of parole allowed
Will Jones
travel within the Confederate States, McCulloch denied him the right
to accompany his fiancé’s family to the port. Eliza went into her
husband’s room alone for what seemed to
Kitty like hours. When she
emerged, Kitty and her eleven-year-old sister wrapped their arms
around their father’s neck and said their good-byes. Belle was
sobbing quietly, while Kitty stood somber and stone-faced.

E
LIZA
ANDERSON WAS CRYING
as family friends loaded them
into their ambulance for yet another wrenching farewell. As
the mules started moving,
Kitty’s beau,
Will Jones shouted, “I
will overtake you before you reach there!” to which Eliza responded,
“And bring Mr. Anderson with you!” They were traveling the same
road that took them back to San Antonio less than four days
previous, but the rear view this time looked gloomy and ugly. They never
saw their Texas home again. At the edge of town, the little
company paused, as
Lieutenant Arthur Leigh had gone back to
Presley
Edwards’s house to retrieve some family photographs. They had
almost made it to the Salado River when night fell and they were forced
to make camp near an ancient little house on the side of the road.
Leigh and
lawyer Jose Augustin Quintero made every effort to tend
to the family’s needs, but sadness and exhaustion had enveloped the
Anderson girls. They fell asleep immediately.

The party woke early the next morning to repack and reload. Once
under way, they made good progress and arrived at the Calaveras
River by lunch time. Before the meal,
Kitty whispered a private
prayer. “Oh father, my dear father, when will I ever see you again?
So blessed of God in every way. Kind heaven grant a nobler destiny
than this we fear!” Passing the very spot where Charles Anderson had
been arrested, the party again made camp. After a brief walk they fell
into another dreary, deep sleep. The days passed with little variation.
They woke early and traveled until sundown, making twenty to
twenty-five miles on a good day. The refugees and their escorts began to
feel more comfortable with each other. Lively conversation provided
occasional relief from premonitions of doom. Quintero engaged Kitty
in a discussion of politics and was surprised at how much she knew.
When he asked her why her father would turn down a parole, Kitty
replied, “Do you think my father would take parole now?” All talk
of such matters ended abruptly.

At Goliad, Eliza urged Kitty to keep up her singing per her father’s
wishes. Anderson loved music and the sound of his favorite
daughter’s voice most particularly. “Every note,” Kitty replied, “seems
to choke me.” So she buried herself in one of her father’s beloved
Shakespeare dramas. The little book was replete with his
characteristic pencil notations. As she gazed at the margins of each page, Kitty
could almost hear her father’s voice. During the journey she learned
that Quintero had an interesting past. Leigh told her that the Cuban
and fellow exiles like Narciso Lopez had attempted to overthrow the
Cuban government with arms and financial backing from U.S.
interests. Quintero continued to work Kitty for information, reading
poetry to her and promising her a parrot he kept with
Colonel John S.
Ford at Brownsville. Ford later pretended to go out of his way to aid
the refugees. However, he was actually their sworn enemy.

The landscape past Palo Blanco became more attractive, with
bright streams, grassy plains, and post oaks. It was a park-like
setting. Leigh sang “How Can I Leave Thee” in his native German as
they rode along, his fine voice cheering the emigrant band. If her
father was only with them, Kitty speculated, they might actually start
enjoying this trip. After a week on the road, the weather changed.
Rains came, alternating in drizzles and torrents. The mules were tired
from their extra exertion in the wet, sandy roads and hungry due to
a scarcity of corn, their favorite fodder. The midday meal for the
humans was “beyond barbaric,” according to Kitty, and they did not
eat it. The day they left San Patricio, where arms were being stored
for the Confederate government, the party made only six miles. An
unfinished, abandoned house on the prairie served as their lodgings
for the night, as the ground was too damp for camping.

On October 12, the company made an arduous seventeen-mile slog,
pushed along by a fierce storm, and arrived at the King ranch. Captain
Richard King had one of the largest and most prosperous ranches in
the state. His sixteen thousand acres included the spring-fed Santa
Gertrudis Creek in the middle of the Wild Horse Desert. King and his
refined wife, Henrietta, were kind to travelers. The Anderson family
enjoyed a brief respite in the comfortable society they were
accustomed to. The next day, packed with a supply of fresh meat from their
generous hosts, the refreshed travelers again braved the hostile desert.
A swift but boring twenty-five-mile ride to Santa Rosa on Saturday
was followed by an equally wearisome trek to Taylor’s Well on the
Sabbath. The only break in the monotony was the addition of Captain
James Walworth to the party, he having joined them from King’s
ranch. Walworth was a clever man and a confirmed bachelor. He was
also an outspoken secessionist, so the Andersons kept their distance.

The rain resumed on Monday and continued during the
twenty-two-mile crawl to Las Animas (the Ghosts). This stretch of the journey
was well named, as they found abandoned vehicles and homesteads
nearly as plentiful as the wild turkeys, ducks, partridges, geese, and
deer that inhabited the area. After two more days of sandy and sparse
wilderness, they stopped at the ranch of
Francis W. Latham, who
treated them with the utmost kindness. He was a Connecticut native
and about to be married to a cousin of Governor William Sprague of
Rhode Island. Like so many former Union men, he eventually
supported secession. Finally they arrived at the edge of Arroyo Colorado,
fourteen miles from Brownsville. Recent rains had flooded the
arroyos and made the crossing a difficult proposition. They were forced
to wait until the water level subsided.

The next day the party encountered several travelers. Judge Devine
met them on his way to court. He expressed mock dismay at Charles
Anderson’s predicament, telling Eliza that he was “astonished” to
hear that her husband had been detained. He was hardly an “alien
enemy” and had the judge been in San Antonio at the time, he
maintained, the capture would not have occurred. Even if he was
considered an enemy of the Confederacy, the judge claimed, it would be
his duty to send Anderson out of Texas as soon as practical. But the
judge was not shooting straight with the
Andersons. He,
Quintero,
and
Henry McCulloch were on the same page. Once his artful
evasion with
Eliza had concluded, the judge had a private conversation
with Quintero. The Cuban insisted that the family should stay in
Brownsville and await the certainty of Anderson’s release; he urged
the Andersons not to worry. His friends would keep an eye on them.

On Thursday, October 17, the anxious family woke shortly after
midnight. They were too excited to sleep, knowing that this part of
their long trial was nearly at an end. The water in the arroyo was
only about a foot deep, so the party crossed and made their way to
Victor’s, a popular inn, where they were given comfortable rooms for
the night. They were greeted by a steady stream of visitors, including
Edward Gallagher and
Robert McCarty, the family’s escorts in their
first attempted emigration. Also calling was San Antonio dentist and
fellow refugee
William G. Kingsbury, a man who proved to be one
of the Andersons’ most loyal friends. The next morning, they moved
to their new lodgings in one of Mr. Latham’s boardinghouses. No
sooner had they arrived than Quintero and
Ford called to check up
on them. Kingsbury arrived later that day. He had been across the
river in Matamoros, Mexico, meeting with friends sympathetic to the
Union cause. There was an English brig set to sail in eight to ten days
for New York with a possible stop in Havana. They might be able
to secure passage. The competition for berths on any vessel leaving
Texas at that time was fierce.

On Saturday, after breakfast Eliza,
Kitty, and
Belle went out to
buy letter paper. Upon their return, Kingsbury called, quite agitated.
Colonel Ford was downstairs under orders to inspect their baggage.
Ford came up to their rooms in a flurry of apologies and examined
the few papers the Andersons had in their possession. His young wife
called minutes later and expressed her displeasure with this
imposition on their privacy.
¹

Kingsbury returned in the afternoon with two other gentlemen
to take the ladies on a tour of Matamoros. The town was unlike
anything Kitty had ever seen. She was used to the Mexican culture
and people of San Antonio, but Matamoros was so different, so
foreign in aspect. She welcomed this small bit of leisure during an
otherwise tumultuous time. Ferrymen rowed the Andersons and their
tour guides from the wharf across the river in two skiffs. The party
climbed aboard carriages for their city excursion. They soon came
upon an enclosed square with grass and trees. Kingsbury said that a
band played there on Sundays and Thursday evenings. Fine two-story
brick mansions with iron railings and balconies fronted the square.
Wealthy ladies could be seen “airing themselves” through the tall,
grated windows on the second floor. They visited the small but
luxuriant gardens of Doña Anna Domingo, landscaped with Spanish
bayonet palms, citron, and other fruit trees. Like most cities in Europe
or America, Matamoros was a city of contrasts.

Most of the dwellings were one-story structures. Traditional
“jacals” composed of mud, sticks, and thatch roofs were interspersed
among modern residences, giving the town a picturesque, exotic
look. The Central Market House was the largest building in town,
surrounded by paved courts and other buildings of various designs
and functions. Most of the houses they saw had iron spikes on their
windows, suggesting to Kitty “a town of prisons.” The town was
alive with short Mexican soldiers with red caps. The visitors soon
learned that the soldiers were going off to quell an insurrection in
some interior village. It appeared that most of the inhabitants of
Matamoros were expecting an attack any day from forces loyal to
Cipriano Guererro, who had recently lost a hotly contested race for
governor of Tamaulipas. The Andersons passed about forty armed
cavalry troops, followed by a tiny piece of artillery guarded by a few
smallish soldiers in gray uniforms and red caps. This force did not
compare favorably to the militia that Kitty and her mother were used
to seeing back in Texas and Ohio. The tour complete, Eliza and her
daughters returned to Brownsville and called it a night.

The next day was Sunday, and Kingsbury took the Andersons
to the Presbyterian Church to hear Reverend Hiram Chamberlain
preach. The celebrant was “sensible and plain,” according to Kitty,
but the music “horrible.” No matter. This was their first
opportunity for formal worship in more than two weeks. Eliza and her girls
prayed ardently for Anderson’s deliverance. The very next day their
prayers would be answered.
²

T
HE DAY THAT HIS FAMILY
left San Antonio,
Charles Anderson
was remanded to the custody of Captain William T. Mechling,
whose artillery brigade was camped six miles east of town at
a place that came to be known as Camp Van Dorn. He was supplied
with two wall tents facing each other with a sun shade in between. He
slept in one of the tents and had his study in the other. Anderson was
under guard twenty-four hours a day. His movements were strictly
circumscribed during his first few weeks of captivity, and he ate all
his meals with Captain Mechling’s family. At first he was allowed
no visitors, but as he and Mechling became better acquainted, these
rules were somewhat relaxed. Eventually most of the prisoner’s
officer friends were permitted to visit him and he seemed to be in pretty
decent spirits. Of course, Anderson was eager to hear of his family’s
arrival in Brownsville. One day he remarked to his good friend and
fellow captive
Lieutenant Zenas R. Bliss that “no bride ever waited
more anxiously for the coming of the groom than I do for the return
of Lt. Leigh.” After a few weeks, Leigh returned with the news that
his family was safe, allowing Anderson to plan his next move.
¹

Men frequently escaped from military prisons in the nineteenth
century. Suitable facilities for the detainment of large numbers of
prisoners often did not exist and certainly could not spring up overnight.
Under the European tradition of a parole of honor, prisoners
were given some freedom of movement while awaiting exchange.
Once incarcerated, however, soldiers were no longer bound by the
conditions of their parole. The first escape from a Civil War prison
occurred in Texas just weeks before Anderson was arrested. Three
sergeants from Reeve’s command who had been captured at San
Lucas Spring in May 1861 arrived in Washington City on October
20. T D. Parker, Franklin Cook, and R. E. Ellenwood of the Eighth
Infantry Regiment said that the Confederates had violated their
parole agreement by placing them under guard and severely reducing
their clothing, blankets, and rations. They made their escape through
West Texas and Mexico, eventually boarding a steamer to Havana
and thence to New York. They made use of detailed military maps to
guide them to safety, the same kind of maps that most of Anderson’s
officer friends possessed.
²