The Lost Gettysburg Address (9 page)

Frequent illnesses gave Anderson ample time for his two
favorite pastimes: reading and learning. He devoured hundreds of books
each year, adding copious notes in the margins for future reference.
A man he particularly admired for his artistic sensibilities published
a travelogue of sorts in 1857 that changed Anderson’s life in
unimaginable ways. Before he became America’s father of landscape
architecture,
Frederick Law Olmsted made a name for himself as a
journalist. His interest in the U.S. slave economy led him to a
commission by the New York
Daily Times
to tour the Southern states
for six years, beginning in 1852. Olmsted and Anderson shared a
passion for adventure.
A Journey through Texas
was one of a series
of works recounting Olmsted’s travels in the American South. They
were instant bestsellers, and this particular edition held Anderson
spellbound.

Olmsted described a frontier land, wild and exotic as any Anderson
had visited on his European tour, but with the added promise of
economic opportunity. As Anderson later recalled, this was the book
that “decided [his] fates.”
³
Olmsted paid particular attention to the
natural landscape in his works. Anderson was easily seduced by
reports of fine, sweet mesquite grasses covering river bottomlands in
abundance. Olmsted described the
San Antonio River as “of a rich
blue and pure as crystal.” Its spring was in a wooded glen north of
town and “may be classed as of the first water among the gems of
the natural world”; the river is of such incredible beauty, he wrote,
that “[you] cannot believe your eyes, and almost shrink from sudden
metamorphosis by invaded nymphdom.”
⁴

By 1858, Anderson had contracted yet another strong affliction,
which his sister-in-law
Catherine Longworth described as “
Texas
fever.” The fever intensified, soon becoming an obsession. Anderson
concocted a plan to set up the first blooded stock operation in the
fledgling state. Despite his failure as an aspiring farmer twenty years
previous, Anderson was determined to once again seek his fortune
in agrarian pursuits. It was a bad decision. The Anderson brothers
shared a life-long passion for horses. Marshall was the family expert
and managed his
brother’s livestock interests in Ohio while Charles
was busy with law and politics. If his youngest brother was to
follow through with this latest endeavor, Marshall would make sure he
had the best stock available. Charles pressed forward with his latest
scheme, despite the contrary advice of friends and family. They knew
that once he had fixed his mind on a course, any attempt to dissuade
him would prove fruitless. That summer, Charles set off on his own
Texas adventure to scout a location for his future ranch. What he
found delighted him.
⁵

The neighborhood that had been the subject of Olmsted’s flowery
gushes lay four miles north of town on an eminence. To its
immediate north were the verdant Worth Springs, where the San Antonio
River literally burst forth from the earth and meandered south, past
whitewashed buildings of the burgeoning town and the crumbling
remains of old Spanish missions. Anderson returned from this
scouting trip excited and energized and immediately made plans for the
move. Leaving his financial affairs in the capable hands of Rufus
King, Anderson set out again for the Lone Star State on January 8,
1859. Eliza and their daughters followed that fall. If any of them
expected to replicate some of the finer aspects of their life in Cincinnati,
they were in for a shocking surprise.
⁶

San Antonio was just beginning to transform itself from what
one visitor in 1845 had described as a “dirty mud hole” into a
modern town. From a mere thirty-five hundred inhabitants in 1850, the
population had tripled just six years later. It was a place of startling
contrasts. On the one hand, investment capital from the industrial
North and unprecedented profits from the cotton boom in the South
were pouring into the town. German immigrant
William Menger,
who had made a small fortune operating a stable and brewery in the
center of San Antonio, opened his namesake hotel that year. It soon
received worldwide acclaim for its lodgings, said to be the best in
the West. Neat one-story stone houses built by German immigrants
were interspersed with new American dwellings of three stories with
fancy brick facades, balconies, and picket fences. On the other hand,
the city’s bleaker sections looked quite different. Older Mexican
dwellings were simple huts made of stakes and mud, topped by river
grass, or low adobe structures without windows. Olmsted and other
observers remarked that San Antonio, with the exception of New
Orleans, was the most complex amalgamation of race and language
of any city in the nation.

The military post in San Antonio provided a solid economic base
and a level of prosperity that was often missing in frontier towns.
Goods from Matagorda Bay 150 miles away found their first trading
depot in this unusual place. The town bustled with government mule
trains, express wagons, and innumerable ox carts hauling all manner
of goods in and out. To the casual observer or unabashed optimist,
San Antonio looked like a great place to be. In reality, life in
southwestern Texas in the middle of the century was hard, primitive, and
dangerous. Street fights were a regular occurrence and hardly a week
went by without the report of a murder or shooting.
⁷
This was not the
Kentucky wilderness that Richard Clough Anderson and his wealthy
Virginia gentleman peers had tamed and molded into a bucolic
paradise of small farms and middling plantations. It certainly was not the
tidy little metropolis of Dayton that Eliza’s Patterson ancestors had
hacked out of a virgin forest.

Despite these challenges, Anderson was determined to create his
idealized version of a country estate and leveraged his military
connections to build it. The site he chose was one of the most picturesque
in the area. Perched on the highest point of land about four miles
north of town and nourished by natural springs at the headwaters
of the San Antonio River stood a half-finished armory. It had been
abandoned by the army and remained standing like a medieval ruin,
an eyesore to the citizens of San Antonio. Anderson purchased the
property and began transforming it into a ranchero mansion. The
building had potential. Laid out in the shape of a Maltese cross, with
thick stone walls and lofty ceilings, the home was cool in the summer
and cozy in the winter. Anderson relished the opportunity to turn
this rough diamond into a sparkling jewel, though it was a mere shell
needing flooring, plaster, and decorative accoutrements. Anderson
poured his considerable energies and money into the project. He
intended to create a showplace. He imagined that it might become one
of the finest new residences in Texas.
⁸

Anderson brought horses and cattle with extensive pedigrees to his
new ranch. They contrasted sharply with the longhorns and Indian
palominos prevalent in the region. He branded the bovines with a
moon and star. He gave his stallions biblical names like Jehoshaphat
and Nebuchadnezzar. He eschewed the black coat and collar
typical of his gentlemen peers, preferring instead the traditional vaquero
outfit of chaps and a broad-brimmed sombrero. Like a character in
one of his favorite Shakespeare plays, Anderson immersed himself
in his own period drama. It soon became a horror story. When slave
traders began to land their illegal cargo at Indianola and Galveston
in blatant defiance of Texas and U.S. laws, Anderson resolved to take
action. He would not stand idle and watch his country disintegrate.
Despite having no political capital in Texas, he was still a man of
talent and influence.
Sam Houston and the Union circle in Texas
needed him.
⁹

Anderson decided to raise a company of “new Texas Rangers” to
“cut the throat of every pirate aboard, scuttle their ships,” and free
the slaves. He had two secret accomplices but needed a third. He
chose a close neighbor whom he suspected shared similar political
views. Anderson revealed his plan to
Dennis Meade and asked for
assistance. Meade replied that if Anderson attempted such a rash plan,
he would call on the real Texas Rangers to stop him. His ardor thus
cooled, Anderson abandoned the scheme. In retrospect, his move to
Texas in 1859 appears rash and unwise. He was so smitten with his
beloved Lady Liberty that he may have misread fatal flaws in the
Constitution as mere hairline cracks in the folds of her otherwise
sparkling marble gown. Anderson was not alone. Throughout the
tortuous final years of the 1850s, few leaders could actually conceive
that sectional divisions and jealousies could lead to the most
catastrophic of outcomes.

Union supporters in Texas were bolstered in these delusions in
August 1859. The election of Sam Houston to the governor’s chair by
a majority of nearly eighty-seven hundred votes came amid the largest
turnout in state electoral history. Houston had defeated incumbent
governor
Hardin R. Runnels, whose Democratic Party’s platform
included formal reopening of the slave trade. Anderson attended
several campaign events and felt that Houston’s emotional connection
with his audience was as great as any speaker he had ever seen. He
later stated that Houston was the most courageous Union man that
ever breathed. Both Houston and Anderson ended up paying a high
price for their patriotism. Strong Union supporters like Houston
existed among the most influential public men in almost every Southern
state. Such Democrats were busy preparing a conservative platform
that, they hoped, would triumph in the next presidential election and
save the country. The events of the next twelve months exposed that
dream as pure fantasy, however. The most sensational of these events
was certainly the seizure of the federal arsenal at Harpers Ferry in
West Virginia by radical abolitionist
John Brown and his gang in
October 1859. Brown had intended to kindle a slave uprising, leading
many Southerners to recall with horror the murders committed by
escaped Virginia slave
Nat Turner’s mob just thirty years earlier.
¹⁰

Back in Cincinnati,
Larz Anderson was sure that his youngest
brother’s Texas adventure was destined to fail. He knew that the only
way to persuade Charles to abandon his folly would be to appeal to
his latent ambition. With a foreign post unlikely and the prospect
of Civil War looming, Larz succeeded in convincing the Buchanan
administration that his youngest brother was the right candidate for
assistant secretary of state. Postmaster general
Joseph Holt, a former
judge from Ohio, tendered the formal offer on February 3, 1860.
Anderson received it two weeks later. It was a tempting opportunity.
The current secretary,
Lewis Cass, was said to be in ill health, and
this appointment could be a stepping-stone to the Cabinet. The
experience would give Anderson national exposure and prepare him for
higher office. It turned out to be one of the most important decisions
of his life.

After careful consideration, Anderson declined Holt’s offer. His
old colleague was persistent and urged him to reconsider, but Charles
would not budge. He was tired of politics. He could not stomach
working alongside fire-eaters like
James G. Breckenridge, who
actively advocated disunion. Besides, the Union had been endangered
before and cooler heads had always prevailed.
¹¹
Later that same
month,
Senator Jefferson Davis of Mississippi introduced resolutions
to affirm that the federal government was obliged to protect
slave-holding interests in the territories. Davis knew full well that this issue
would split the Democratic Party in the upcoming convention. The
resolutions would also blunt
Steven Douglas’s efforts to establish
popular sovereignty in new states and territories. The Union was in
serious jeopardy. Anderson realized that the “sham of state equality,”
as he called it, was no longer the exclusive doctrine of extremists like
William L. Yancy of South Carolina. The lie had become the favored
dogma of the Southern Democratic Party in what Anderson described
as the “morbid madness of their unbridled lust for power.”
¹²

Anderson’s dreams were disintegrating and he could no longer
pretend otherwise. In March 1860 he placed an ad in the
Goliad
Messenger
, seeking the return of twenty-three Spanish mares, two
saddle horses, a roan, and a sorrel pony that had been “lost.” Stock
not endangered by extended drought, rattlesnake bites, or other
natural hazards were continually at risk of being stolen by Indians,
bandits, or even unscrupulous neighbors. Lawlessness and violence in
Texas was growing as loyalty to the Union ebbed.
¹³
Independence
Day proved melancholy. Anderson called it “our national Holy Day”
and exclaimed, “Great God! Is it to be our last?” He could now see
that disunion was a distinct probability and his mood was gloomy.
“Poor fool,” he lamented, “to love one’s country to the point of
distress.” When he looked to the future, Anderson saw “a hell of
woes  .  .  .  bleeding, blazing, groaning directly and boundlessly
beyond.” Tragically, this vision would come to pass.

A few days earlier, workmen constructing his house had found one
of the Andersons’ two slaves, a young black boy named Dan, dead
in the river. Charles was convinced that the boy had been murdered.
By the end of July, violence against blacks had escalated into one of
the most shameful events in the history of the young state. Rumors of
imminent slave uprisings and other conspiracies of blacks and
abolitionists were routinely planted in newspapers in Texas and
throughout the South, concocted by Southern radicals to frighten and inflame
readers. The result was horrific brutality in Texas in 1860.
¹⁴