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.
Anderson had grown up with slavery, but since he had gone on
record early as an opponent of Ohio’s Black Laws, his opinions on
the so-called “Negro question” carried some credibility. Denying the
franchise to newly freed slaves was a nuanced position for
abolitionists. They deplored the moral depravity of slavery but recognized the
dangers inherent in such radical change. Anderson predicted that
giving the vote to blacks immediately would “Africanize—yes, worse
still, Mexicanize our people and institutions, which would, in
consequence, pass through wildest anarchy into a settled despotism.” He
urged the party to end this radical agitation or risk ruining both the
party and the Union itself.
10
The topic remained in the forefront of political debate, and
everyone seemed to have an opinion. Anderson’s close friend General
William T. Sherman shared his views on the Negro and other
moderate measures of reconstructing the Union. Sherman’s opinions,
expressed in a social situation, had been published without his consent,
thus violating the custom that soldiers should stay out of politics.
Anderson was vocal in defending the general. In a private letter to
Anderson, Sherman maintained that he had done and was prepared
to “do as much toward ameliorating the condition of the negro as
anyone,” but to give them the franchise would lead to “the utter ruin
of their race,” or to the damage of the “national character.” Giving
blacks the franchise was a political ploy by the radicals to
manufacture votes, Sherman argued. “Our country needs repose,” the general
counseled. To place newly freed slaves on the same political and social
footing as whites would create new troubles. These attempts were, in
Sherman’s words, “mischievous and dangerous.” Sherman wanted the
president to stop wasting his time pardoning individuals, declare a
general amnesty for the South, and get on with the business of an
orderly and peaceful reunion. Anderson shared these hopes. Both men
suffered disappointment as reunion devolved into partisanship.
11
Early in 1865,
Brough had turned down Lincoln’s offer to succeed
Salmon P. Chase as treasury secretary. Now that his term as governor
was winding down, Brough had to decide whether to run again or go
back to his business career. It was an easy decision. The governor had
grown unpopular with military officers when he insisted on
awarding promotions strictly on seniority rather than merit. The public had
become accustomed to the refined manners and dignified bearing of
previous chief executives. They did not love the hard-working but
gruff “Fat Jack.” On June 16, Brough announced that he would not
stand for reelection. He had taken the job only out of a sense of duty,
he declared, and he had done his work honestly and conscientiously.
Just days after the announcement, Brough was walking across the
State House yard when he stumbled and fell, bruising his hand and
badly spraining his ankle. This seemingly innocuous event had
significant consequences for Anderson.
12
While Brough nursed his ankle,
Anderson continued to
campaign for a diplomatic assignment. The United States minister to
the Kingdom of Italy,
George Perkins Marsh, had been appointed
to the post by Lincoln in 1861. Marsh was already an accomplished
diplomat, having served under
President Zachary Taylor as minister
to the Ottoman Empire. In 1864 he wrote a book titled
Man and
Nature
that would establish his fame as the father of the U.S.
conservation movement. In 1865, however, Marsh’s son was dying, so
he was granted leave to return home and care for him. The word
on the street was that Marsh would soon resign his post. Anderson
trotted out a series of big names to support his candidacy to succeed
Marsh, but Secretary
Seward was still recovering from a near fatal
encounter with one of Booth’s co-conspirators. In the meantime, the
indefatigable Brough was trying to move his immense frame around
with a cane, which inflamed his injuries. Gangrene set in. On July 19,
Sidney Maxwell, Brough’s aide de camp, reported that the governor
was hemorrhaging and had developed a “congestive chill.” He did
not believe that Brough would recover.
13
While Charles Anderson was filling in for the bedridden
governor, Ohio senator
Robert C. Schenck had made some headway with
President Johnson. “Andy wants a note calling attention to your
case,” Schenck wrote. The senator sat down and wrote the note in
front of the president, who endorsed it, instructing Seward to give it
special attention. Seward acted as if he had never met Anderson,
despite having greeted him just eighteen months earlier at Gettysburg.
In the meantime,
Governor Morton of Indiana was sponsoring his
own candidate for the expected vacancy—a poet and artist named
Thomas Brennan Read. Morton had even convinced
General William
T. Sherman to endorse the recommendation. Sherman sheepishly
admitted that he did not know that Anderson was seeking the post.
Ohio senator
Benjamin Franklin Wade also saw the president, who
made it clear that he would defer to Seward. “It passes my
comprehension,”
John Sherman wrote on August 2, “that Seward says he
did not know of your application.” It was all a big waste of energy,
as Marsh decided to return to his post. He ended up holding the
position for twenty-one years, the longest such service in U.S. history.
14
General Benjamin Rush Cowen wrote Anderson on August 26 to
tell him that
Brough had again taken a turn for the worse. “Friends
have given up all hope of his recovery,” Cowen lamented, “and the
governor himself has ceased to hope.” Two days later,
Brough died
and Anderson became governor. One of his first official acts was to
declare a day of mourning on September 1. He asked that businesses
close their doors from ten a.m. to three p.m. in remembrance of their
departed leader. Those who knew Anderson well wondered if this
unexpected honor would be a blessing or a curse to a man so utterly
fed up with politics.
George Henshaw, a Cincinnati furniture dealer
and family friend, was unsure if he should offer “congratulations or
condolences.” Noting that Anderson’s name would now go down in
Ohio history, Henshaw remarked to his friend “Whether this is a
source of gratification to yourself you alone know.”
15
Anderson began his four-month gubernatorial tenure by
lobbying Secretary of War
Stanton to allow Ohio’s volunteer army units
to muster out of service. The war was over, Anderson reminded the
secretary. The brave men who volunteered their service in that cause
should be discharged immediately. In September, Governor Anderson
ordered the books of the state treasury audited. He discovered that
Ohio treasurer
Godwin Volney Dorsey had been embezzling state
funds during wartime. This revelation turned Anderson’s stomach.
He ordered the popular Dorsey arrested. When critics accused the
governor of exceeding his authority by exercising judicial powers
without a trial, Anderson’s reply was straight from Lincoln’s own
playbook. “Powers legally wanting must be forcibly usurped,” he
argued, “to meet an exigency and danger to the public.” Ohio attorney
general
Chauncey Olds backed the governor’s decision.
16
Anderson spent the balance of his lame duck term networking with
old friends and planning his future. Being elected governor was never
a consideration. He did not want the job and, besides, party leaders
had already made their choice. Union general
Jacob Dolson Cox, a
former Whig state senator and ardent abolitionist, had helped found
Ohio’s Republican Party in 1855. He was an advocate for President
Johnson’s reconstruction policies. Cox hated slavery but did not think
that freedmen had demonstrated that they were ready to assume all of
the privileges of citizenship. They should certainly not be allowed to
vote. Other former abolitionists, such as
Henry B. Payne, shared the
same moderate views on black suffrage. They courted Anderson as a
potential dark horse for the U.S. Senate race in 1866. It was another
false hope, as both
John Sherman and
Robert Schenck, whom Payne
expected to align with radicals like Massachusetts senator
Charles
Sumner, refused to show their hands on the controversial issue.
17
When it came time to deliver the traditional annual state message
for the year 1866, Anderson saw an opportunity to give his political
views their widest airing to date. While he did not
address the issue
of full black citizenship directly, he did weigh in obliquely. The now
fractious Union Party and Governor-elect Cox had been unable to
agree on a unified platform and deferred the matter to the incoming
legislature. Radical senators from the the northeast corner of Ohio
introduced a resolution to strike the word “white” from the state
constitution. Anderson took a firm stand against the proposal and
pointed out that any amendments to the constitution in such times
were probably unwise and would need to be considered in the
election of 1867. The issue was not settled until the ratification of the
Fifteenth Amendment in 1870, which prohibited states from denying
the franchise to men on the basis of race. The Ohio legislature
approved the Fifteenth Amendment by just one vote in the senate and
by a mere two votes in the house.
Besides the typical reporting on public works, finance, railroad, and
pending legislation, Governor Anderson felt compelled to offer his
opinion on what the press was calling the
“Mexican Imbroglio.”
Mexico’s domestic affairs had been a mess for years. The French had
taken advantage of this internal strife and America’s preoccupation
with its own civil war by invading Mexico. They had established a
Catholic-sponsored government headed by Maximillian Ferdinand, a
Hapsburg archduke from Austria. The United States had been vocal
in sponsoring republican movements to oust European colonial
governments throughout Latin America, and the thought of a
permanent French colony on its southern doorstep was unsettling to say the
least. Now that the war was over and the Union controlled a huge
army, some were invoking the
Monroe Doctrine and suggesting that
the United States conquer Mexico as part of its manifest destiny.
Anderson bristled at the very prospect of another bloody war
based on what he believed were false principles. The governor
invoked Washington’s farewell address, which warned against
“entangling alliances,” arguing that the Monroe Doctrine proscribed that
the United States assume “guardianship over all the imbeciles of
the continent or globe.” Mexico could never be a true republic after
forty years of anarchy, Anderson maintained. He called Mexicans
a “population of fanatics and barbarians” and wished “they could
only go back into Aztecs.” He could not help but revisit the
annexation of Texas that he had so strongly opposed. “Without that fatal
golden apple of discord,” Anderson audaciously claimed, “we should
not have had our War of Rebellion.” Anderson equated the aim to
“propagandize Liberty” to Mexicans with past efforts to promote
Christianity to the “Saracens of Jerusalem or the Chinese at Peking.”
He closed by again invoking Washington’s “eleventh commandment”:
mind your own business.
18
Anderson’s state of the state message created a sensation. Dozens
of letters poured in from all over the country requesting copies of the
speech. The
New York Times
published a long article on the address,
with fully half of the text devoted to the governor’s position on the
Mexican question.
General William T. Sherman weighed in
immediately with his complete endorsement of Anderson’s position. The
general was convinced that it would be “suicide . . . as a nation to
engage in a new war with an old one yet smoldering.” Sherman was
aware that some of his peers, including
General Ulysses S. Grant,
were pushing for action against France in Mexico. “I don’t care,”
declared Sherman, “and will assert my own convictions regardless
of their popularity.” Little wonder Sherman and Anderson were such
close friends.
19
War hawks attacked Anderson’s New Year message. Famed
archeologist and U.S. commissioner to Peru,
Ephraim George Squier,
described the reaction in New York. Anderson’s address was greeted
by “mingled groans and hisses,” according to Squier. Cries of “Turn
him out!” came presumably from less informed listeners who did not
realize that the governor had only a few days left to serve. “When
you come to New York,” Squier advised, “be sure to register yourself
under another name.” Anderson rewrote the speech in French so that
even the colonists in Mexico would know exactly where he stood. In
the end, however, Seward rattled the saber, France backed down, and
Benito Juarez established a Mexican republic.
20