The Lost Gettysburg Address (23 page)

Anderson did not attend the convention in Columbus. The day
after the meeting closed on June 17, 1863, party leader
John Caldwell
wrote to the candidate to inform him of his nomination to run for
lieutenant governor. The following day, Anderson received another
letter from an old friend, newly elected U.S. congressman
William
Johnston. The congressman congratulated Anderson on his
achievement and proposed a tongue-in-cheek campaign slogan: “Charlie is
lean and Jack’s not that. A steak of lean and a steak of fat.” There
would be few such humorous moments in this campaign, which has
been remembered by many historians as one of the nastiest
gubernatorial races in U.S. history.
⁴

One man who was not pleased about Anderson’s nomination was
his brother and mentor,
Larz. On June 26, Larz expressed
displeasure at the thought of his youngest brother reentering politics. Politics
was for the wealthy, Larz insisted. His brother appeared consistently
on the verge of financial ruin. After Charles explained his rationale,
however, his older brother gave him his blessing. Charles accepted
the nomination on July 1. In his acceptance letter, he claimed that
the election of Vallandigham to the governor’s chair would be “a
greater calamity than the defeat and capture of any army we have in
the field.” On July 4, Larz wrote a letter pledging his support. “I am
glad that you have accepted the nomination,” Larz admitted, “not
on your own account, but for the sake of the country.” His younger
brother was making “a great sacrifice,” Larz realized, “against all
personal predilections and objections, to duty and patriotism.” He
advised Charles not to focus on the legality of Vallandigham’s arrest.
Concentrate instead on the war as the way to save the Union, Larz
pleaded. Knowing that his brother could not afford to make the run,
Larz sent him five hundred dollars to use toward campaign expenses.
⁵

The Ohio gubernatorial election became a referendum on Lincoln’s
war policies. The same day that Larz gave his blessing to Anderson’s
candidacy, Lincoln’s generals were concluding two key battles that
turned the tide of the war. Confederate defeats at Vicksburg and
Gettysburg meant that a Union triumph was inevitable. Confederate
general
John H. Morgan’s alarming but ill-advised raid through
Indiana and Ohio during July 8–26 also helped rally voters behind
the Union cause. The biggest question was whether the public had the
stomach for the additional young lives and treasure it would take to
finish the job. Brough and Anderson entered the race as the favorites
when only weeks before the Democrats had held sway with public
opinion.
⁶

The campaign was fierce, ugly, and violent. The pace was
relentless. The candidates themselves retained an air of civility, but their
minions were crass and even vulgar. One of
Salmon P. Chase’s
flunkies contacted Anderson, advising him to tone down his refined image
on the stump. “Smoke and throw away your cigarettes,”
Joseph
Geiger wrote to the candidate on July 10. “Use a horse cock,” Geiger
bleated, and “look like a man, not a female baby.” Anderson did not
reply. The
Dayton Empire
, reborn after being temporarily censored
by Burnside, lashed out at Anderson, branding him an “abolitionist”
in the same vein as
Joshua Giddings and Salmon Chase. “We cannot
conceive how any man can long remain in such company,” the
Empire
sneered, “without becoming black.” In fact, Anderson despised the
abolitionists nearly as much as he reviled the Copperheads.
⁷

Ohio senator
John Sherman and his brother,
General William T.
Sherman, were personal friends of Anderson and lent their support.
Senator Sherman hit the road delivering countless speeches in support
of the Brough-Anderson ticket. He ridiculed Copperhead complaints
about Vallandigham’s arrest and exile. If Democrats really must vote
for someone they felt was wronged, then vote for Anderson, Sherman
reasoned, “who suffered ten thousand times more at the hands of
traitors” than had Vallandigham in his civilized banishment. General
Sherman was typically blunt. Vallandigham’s supporters were
cowards, the general insisted in an August letter to Anderson. “They try
to cover up their cowardice with a plan of peace.” “I have seen such
men in battle,” Sherman continued. “When bursting shells and
hissing bullets made things uncomfortable, they would suddenly discover
that they were sick or had left something back in camp. I am no voter
but I have some 20 lb. rifles that have more sense than 4,100 of the
voters of Ohio,” the general exclaimed. “If you want them say so.”

This election was the first in which Ohio soldiers in the field could
cast a legal vote.
Joseph Leeds of the Seventy-Ninth Ohio Infantry
wrote that there was not much excitement in camp as all but a dozen
soldiers in his regiment were voting for Brough. He described a
“frolick” that the men had a few days before the election. “We hung old
Val in effigy,” Leeds related, “and if we had the old boy himself we
would serve him the same way.” Numerous officers, like Colonel
Stephen McGroarty of the Sixty-First Ohio Infantry, were given
furloughs so they could hit the meeting circuit and stump for the Union
candidates.
⁸

The candidates barnstormed all over the state. From mid-August
through mid-September, Anderson gave nineteen speeches in thirty-four
days. Pugh’s voice gave out during an exhausting campaign
schedule as he stood in for his exiled running mate. As victory for Brough
and Anderson neared, the election rhetoric grew more personal.
Vallandigham gained a coup of sorts on August 21, when Anderson’s
brother
Marshall declared for the Democrats. Marshall’s logic was
simple. Whoever supports the war effort, by virtue of the Emancipation
Proclamation, supports abolitionism. “Abolitionism,” Anderson’s
brother declared, “is the sire and dam of disunion.” Marshall had
worked hard early in the war to enlist troops and willingly sent two
sons into Union service. His nephew died at Vicksburg. What he could
not abide, however, was the loss of civil liberties that Lincoln’s wartime
actions foreshadowed. He supported Vallandigham, he declared,
because he prefered “the principle of Liberty to the price of blood.”

Marshall went on to compare the Union ticket to a jockey and
his horse. “Smiling Jack” Brough left Anderson carrying the heavy
speaking load during the campaign. If not kept to a focused
message, Marshall claimed, “just as sure as the glowing hide of the fat
knight emits the odors of Africa, so surely will Charley fly the track,
and then ‘farewell, a long farewell to all your hopes and glory.’”
Vallandigham sent the same message about Anderson in a less
brotherly tone: “Charles is a very uncertain quantity—a filthy gentleman
whose brain is not very securely anchored in his skull cap.” Political
independence was not something that many politicians or even
brothers understood or respected.
⁹

On September 18, Anderson gave the last of his campaign speeches in
Mount Vernon, Ohio. A day later, the bloody
Battle of Chickamauga
began. Anderson’s former regiment suffered severely, among nearly
thirty-five thousand casualties. Its commanding officer,
Colonel
Hiram Strong, was mortally wounded. Other friends and family were
casualties of this epic battle.
Colonel Nicholas Anderson of the Sixth
Ohio suffered grave injuries. Kitty Anderson’s fiancé, the loyal and
brave
Will Jones, died on the field. Charles Anderson went home to
grieve with his daughter, hoping that this military defeat would not
turn the tide of the election. He need not have worried.

Brough and Anderson won the day by more than one hundred
thousand votes amid the largest turnout in Ohio electoral history.
They won the soldier vote by a majority of nearly forty thousand,
while winning both Vallandigham’s home county and the city of
Dayton. Officials in the Lincoln administration celebrated. Treasury
secretary
Salmon P. Chase said that the Union could “count every
ballot a bullet fairly aimed at the heart of the rebellion.” Lincoln himself
admitted that he was more anxious about the Brough-Vallandigham
contest than he had been over his own election in 1860. When Ohio
governor David Tod wired the good news to the president, Lincoln
reportedly responded, “Glory to God in the highest; Ohio has saved
the Union.”
¹⁰

T
HE OHIO ELECTION RESULTS WERE
widely publicized,
thrusting Anderson back into the national spotlight. When
New York’s Union Party faced a tough battle with Democrats
for control of the state legislature, party leader
William P. Wellen
reached out to Anderson, asking him to speak before the November 3
contest. He declined. Anderson had made it clear to anyone listening
during his own campaign that he was in the race for one purpose
only: to win the war and save the Union. “I am and expect to be
neither a Republican nor a Democrat,” he declared. “The one is not
better than the other.” In later years he looked back on this
opportunity, calling himself a “fool.” Anderson believed that his stubborn
independence and refusal to go fishing for higher office may have
ultimately cost him a shot at the vice presidency.
¹

David Tod identified with Anderson’s unfettered stance. The
governor, a radical Democrat before the war, had governed under the
Union banner. Tod placed the welfare of the country above party
loyalties. As his administration wound down, the governor, who
had demonstrated so much commitment and patriotism in raising
volunteers for the war, searched for ways to secure his legacy. He
looked to Anderson to help his cause by staying the course. The
governors of the various states that had suffered casualties at the epic
Battle of Gettysburg were asked to send delegations to a ceremony
in November 1863. The consecration of a new national cemetery
within the borders of the battlefield prompted this great gathering.
President Lincoln, Secretary of State William Seward, and
countless other government officials planned to attend. Tod embraced the
idea with more enthusiasm than any of his peers. He assembled a
large delegation of state officials, including former
governor William
Dennison, Brough, and Anderson, to represent Ohio at a mass
meeting the evening following the dedication. When it came to a featured
speaker for the event, Tod’s choice was obvious. He asked the
lieutenant governor-elect to prepare suitable remarks for the occasion.
Anderson eagerly accepted.
²

The governor and most of the Ohio delegation departed on
Monday, November 16. They expected to stop for the night in
Altoona, Pennsylvania, but fate intervened. Two freight engines
collided on the tracks near Coshocton, Ohio, so the dignitaries were
delayed after a trip of fewer than eighty miles. Tod was already under
attack from Democratic newspapers for funding the transportation
from the state treasury. He and his fellow passengers added fuel to
the fire when they spent the next four hours enjoying libations at a
local distillery called Hay’s Fountain. “High Times on the Way to
Gettysburg,” jeered the headline in the
Daily Ohio Statesman
. The
Cincinnati Enquirer
hooted that Ohio’s public officials “should be
ashamed of themselves.”
³

Brough and Anderson missed the party at Hay’s Fountain, joining
the delegation in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, on Tuesday. The railroad
added as many extra trains as they could as the assemblage swelled
to more than fifteen thousand. Governors from at least eight states
arrived in the tiny town of
Gettysburg with their entourages. The
Presidential Guard, multiple detachments of infantry, eight
companies of artillery, and a cavalry unit converged on the scene. Shortly
after sundown, President Lincoln, three cabinet secretaries, foreign
diplomats, and distinguished citizens disembarked for the next day’s
festivities. When the immense crowd pleaded with the president to
speak, he made his apologies. Lincoln was ill and fatigued.
⁴

One man who seldom appeared tired was legendary Massachusetts
politician and educator
Edward Everett.
David Willis, who helped
finance the cemetery project and organized the event, chose Everett for
the dedication’s principal speech. He so coveted the famous orator
that he was willing to delay the consecration a month to give Everett
adequate time to prepare. Everett’s pedigree was impressive. He was
a former governor who had served in both houses of Congress. He
held the post of ambassador to the United Kingdom and later became
the twentieth U.S. secretary of state. Everett was once a Unitarian
preacher and a former president of Harvard College. His unsuccessful
candidacy for vice president on the John Bell ticket in 1860 closed out
his political career, and he became a full-time orator. His words were
much anticipated by the throngs attending the memorial ceremonies.

November 19 dawned cold, and a heavy fog reinforced the
solemnity of the occasion. At ten o’clock the long retinue of dignitaries
began a slow march through the streets of Gettysburg to the
cemetery. The head of the procession arrived at the speaker’s platform at
a quarter past eleven, when the soldiers honored the president with
a military salute and the dedication program began. Lincoln sat
between
Seward and Everett on the packed stand. The crowd listened as
the band played a funeral dirge composed by
Adolph Birgfeld called
“Homage d’un Heros.”
The Reverend Thomas H. Stockton, chaplain
of the U.S. House of Representatives, then gave a long and soulful
prayer, which left most people in the audience, including Lincoln and
Everett, in tears. Another musical interlude followed before Everett
rose to deliver the keynote address.