A petition from the Society of Friends of Whitewater, Indiana,
just across the state border, motivated Anderson to renew his attack
on
Ohio’s unfair Black Laws. These codes restricted free movement
of blacks between the two states, obstructing commerce. According
to the young senator from Dayton, these statutes were
“unconstitutional, grossly wrong and unjust in principle and integrity.” The
restrictions were “brutal and inhumane in practice,” Anderson
exclaimed, amounting to “a stain of disgrace blotting our laws.” He
urged their immediate repeal. Anderson’s fellow Whigs saw little
opportunity to pass any such legislation, however, as the lower house
was still dominated by Democrats. The petition went nowhere, and
Anderson’s political reputation ebbed.
10
The problem with Anderson, as his peers saw it, was that he stood
so firm on principle while ignoring the cardinal rules of republican
politics. Legislative success required artful compromise and prescient
timing. Anderson was deficient in both areas. Former colleague
George F. Drake recalled that Anderson’s “brilliant talents” were
diminished by his “dogmatic and to some extent intolerant” stands that
too often left him in the minority. When Ohio’s Black Laws fell just a
few years later, it was not the result of furious assaults from true
believers like Anderson or abolitionists like
Joshua Giddings, but rather
through the crass political deal-making that Anderson so abhorred.
When his term ended, no one dared suggest that he run for reelection.
By refusing to play the game by the politicians’ rules, Anderson had
alienated all parties. His nascent political career appeared to be over.
It was time to follow his brother Larz’s advice and commit himself
fully to his chosen profession.
Cincinnati was the logical place to
begin anew.
11
Larz Anderson made sure that his youngest brother would not fail
in this latest attempt to restart his career. Now that Larz was no
longer a practicing attorney, he spent most of his considerable
energy managing the estate of his father-in-law,
Nicholas Longworth.
Longworth was not just the richest man in Cincinnati. He was the
second wealthiest man in the nation. His personal attorney,
Rufus
King, took Charles Anderson in as partner, and the family moved to
the Queen City in 1847. This placed the younger Anderson brother
under the watchful eye of his mentor and squarely in the middle of
elite society in the burgeoning metropolis. The results were just as
Larz expected. Anderson was an immediate success at the bar and
in social circles. He and his partner shared a love for the arts and a
dedication to public service. King is remembered as the father of the
Cincinnati library system and left a considerable endowment to
various charitable organizations.
12
Anderson flourished in his new environment. He used Larz’s
connections to gain access for himself and his friends to the highest places
of power, both in the West and in the nation’s capital. With family
friend
Zachary Taylor now in the White House, the Andersons of
Cincinnati, backed by the Longworth fortune, wielded considerable
influence. In the summer of 1849, Anderson reported being “quite
enamored of Old Zack and his family,” while making the high
society rounds in Washington City. He spent time with
Thomas Ewing,
the foster father of his good friend
William Tecumseh Sherman, and
Ewing’s daughter Ellen, who was destined to become Sherman’s wife.
It was a tight little circle in the capital city, and Anderson relished the
opportunity to peek into the salons of power. The allure was
irresistible to him.
13
While Charles and his oldest brother discussed paintings and
sipped sherry with polite society, their
brother Robert was once again
doing his duty, despite fighting for a cause he thought unjust. The
annexation of Texas had started a war with Mexico that lasted the
better part of two years. Robert and his longtime friend
Winfield
Scott played key roles in the conflict. The wounded Robert emerged
as a hero, but these accolades were bittersweet. Charles was closer
to Robert than any of his brothers, and it pained him to know that
his favorite had suffered so much for such an ignoble purpose. What
was this national delusion called “manifest destiny,” the thing that
sparked such boorish imperialism on the part of his beloved country?
Anderson the scholar decided to study the issue in his usual
painstaking manner. After he had finished his analysis, he parsed out all of
the illogical rhetoric of this immensely popular notion. He delivered
a masterful demolition of the manifest destiny concept, thus placing
himself virtually alone among contemporary white intellectuals on
the subject of race theory.
14
The issue of race had perplexed Charles Anderson from childhood.
He found it nearly impossible to reconcile his moral misgivings
concerning slavery with the political expediency that enshrined the
peculiar institution into the Constitution. It was a repugnant bargain,
yet it held the Union together. The innate superiority of the white
race was a nearly uncontested scientific fact to practically every white
American, from
John C. Calhoun to renowned abolitionist
William
Lloyd Garrison. Pseudoscientists calling themselves “phrenologists”
claimed that skull measurements proved that innate differences made
the Negro race akin to a separate species. Historians and politicians
of the day added fuel to the fire when they suggested that the
natural characteristics of an
Anglo-Saxon “race” meant that white
people were chosen by God to rule lesser humans. This was more than
Anderson could stand. He launched a withering attack on the idea of
an
“Anglo Saxon destiny” at the Philomathesian Society at Kenyon
College on August 8, 1849. Few if any in the audience that day had
heard anything remotely like it.
The speech itself was a tour de force of logical argument and
probably the finest rhetorical effort of Anderson’s life. Unlike his peers,
Anderson did not oppose manifest destiny merely because of its crude
violence or its potential impact on the balance between slave and free
states. Rather, he questioned the rationale behind the doctrine,
dismantling the argument point by point. This false creed was so
universal in its adoption and so insidious in the way it pandered to the pride
of elite and poor whites alike that it created huge barriers to anyone
bold enough to challenge it. The first error that Anderson exposed
was the myth of an Anglo-Saxon race. Ancient historians like Tacitus
never mentioned the Saxons. Neither the Saxons nor the Angles ever
represented a majority of peoples inhabiting the British Isles. Like
the Americans, according to Anderson, the British throughout
history were composed of the most “mongrel and heterogeneous stock
of people on earth.” There could hardly be an Anglo-Saxon destiny
when that race itself did not exist.
The mere idea of racial destiny was preposterous, in Charles
Anderson’s view. First, it was more than presumptuous for any
people to claim that they could divine God’s will. Throughout history,
one empire after another felt convinced that it was destined to rule.
Many justified violence and even genocide in the name of racial
superiority and destiny. All of these empires eventually fell. The great
achievements of ancient cultures and those of the British-American
people were due mostly to circumstance. Who was to say, for
example, that the achievements of Americans in constructing a free and
prosperous republic were any greater than the artistic triumphs of
the Italians or the technical advances of the ancient Chinese? Was
the successful American experiment the result of a providential racial
destiny, or the product of great leaders seizing a moment in time?
Americans who continued to believe in what Anderson described as
“a fallacy in philosophy, and untruth in history, and an impiety in
religion” would someday face a harsh reckoning.
Anderson went on to challenge even the most sacred tenet of this
racial philosophy: the idea that blacks, or Mexicans, or any other
ethnic group were inherently inferior to white people. Here he used
his audience’s own religious beliefs to support his case. The Bible
taught the unity of the species, Anderson argued. At various times
throughout history, different races of men achieved dominance—not
by virtue of any inherent superiority but as a matter of favorable
circumstance. In other words, conditions in certain areas of the world
allowed their residents to develop more quickly than others living
in a less-than-ideal environment. This nurture-versus-nature view
clashed forcefully with the self-serving arguments of manifest
destiny adherents. Even America’s lowly nineteenth-century
Catholics—despised by many—saw themselves as the Jews of old did: “a royal
priesthood, a people set apart.” Anderson’s logic suggested that free
blacks who competed with whites for jobs, or even slaves (considered
vile and ignorant by some), could achieve as much as whites given the
proper circumstances was just too much for some to bear. Others,
like
Larz Anderson, simply laughed it off. Larz sent a copy of the
speech to
Orlando Brown, director of the Bureau of Indian Affairs
at the time, thinking it would “amuse” him with its “monomania”
against Anglo-Saxons.
15
Charles Anderson’s unusual speech drew the attention of the press
and public outside of Ohio. He reprised the address before the New
England Society of Cincinnati. After hearing it delivered on December
20, 1849, some political leaders insisted the speech be published and
widely circulated. As was the case throughout his long life, Charley’s
penchant for drawing a crowd and delivering compelling, often
entertaining orations, made him one of the most popular and controversial
speakers in the West.
16
A talent for public speaking was a useful tool for an attorney. In
June 1850 partners Anderson and
King represented
Dr. William R.
Winton in one of the most sensational criminal cases ever heard in
Ohio. The wealthy and respected doctor, an 1837 graduate of the
Ohio Medical College, specialized in surgery to correct deformities
of the limbs. When he was approached by the parents of
eighteen-year-old Harriet Keever, Winton offered to treat her club foot in his
own home. The unfortunate girl became pregnant and accused the
doctor of seducing her. Imagine Charles Anderson reflecting back on
his talks with Larz regarding the “low acts” that both despised in the
political realm. Was defending a man accused of raping an innocent
invalid any less onerous? Still, Anderson agreed to defend the doctor
in Preble County Court.
There he faced a hostile jury and a public enraged by the heinous
nature of this apparent crime. Anderson used all of his considerable
skills of debate and persuasion to create reasonable doubt as to his
client’s guilt. The alleged rapes took place while the doctor’s wife
and the local minister chatted in a room next door. The victim did
not cry out or attempt to run away after five supposed molestations.
She was driven home by the doctor and arranged to see him for a
follow-up appointment months after she left his home. She only made
her accusation after the birth of her child, nine and a half months
after she left the doctor’s residence. Despite the lack of credible
evidence and the conflicting testimony of the alleged victim and her
family, Winton was convicted of “seduction,” a lesser charge than
rape. Judge Crane’s instructions to the jury were clear: they either
had to find the defendant guilty or declare that the young woman was
nothing more than a “perjured strumpet.” Anderson admitted in his
closing argument that such a verdict in the face of so little evidence
would shake his faith in the legal system. In reality, he knew better
than to expect perfect justice in an imperfect world.
Anderson’s losses in the courtroom and on the stump did little to
tarnish his image or his growing celebrity. His entire thirty-five-page
closing argument was published the following year. His rapid rise
to prominence on a larger stage did not go unnoticed by state party
leaders. Despite being all but banished from political life just four
years earlier, a considerable effort was made to nominate Charles
Anderson for the United States Senate in 1851. His well-known
independence made him a potential compromise candidate, as Whigs and
Democrats grappled with the popular
Free Soil Party
movement in a
fast-changing game of party realignment.
17
Anderson himself appeared a little bemused at the prospect of being
used as political barter. The machinations began in November 1850,
when
Judge Holt,
Anderson’s older brother Larz, and other
prominent Democrats prepared to support Charles’s candidacy, rather than
allow the Free Soil Party to triumph. “I prefer the weakest Democrat
in Ohio, representing a large and honest party,” Anderson wailed, “to
one of those traitorous fanatics or knaves, though he be Webster in
intellect or Clay in statesmanship.” A confused mess of backroom
dealings concluded at the Whig caucus in January 1851, where Anderson
was beaten, as he had predicted, “by some damned small fry” named
Hiram Griswold. The vote was twenty-six to twenty. Griswold and the
Whig Party were crushed in the election at the statehouse.
Benjamin
Franklin Wade emerged as victor on the Thirty-Seventh ballot. Wade
went on to serve three terms and become one of the most radical
Republicans in Washington.
18
Charles Anderson traveled to Baltimore in June 1852 for the
quadrennial national Whig convention. The Democrats had nominated
New Hampshire native
Franklin Pierce for president only weeks
earlier. Incumbent chief executive
Millard Fillmore coveted the Whig
nomination, but Anderson and most others felt he had little chance to
beat Pierce. They nominated
General Winfield Scott after Anderson
gave a rousing speech supporting his old friend. Just days after the
convention concluded,
Henry Clay died of tuberculosis. He was the
first person to lie in state in the United States Capitol. Pierce then
trounced Scott in one of the most lopsided presidential elections in
history. The Whig Party was essentially dead, rendered irrelevant by
their divisions over slavery and unable to survive the passing of their
founder.
19