The Lost Gettysburg Address: Charles Anderson’s Civil War Odyssey by David T. Dixon (review)

For those familiar with the dedication of the Soldiers’ National Cemetery at Gettysburg on November 19, 1863, highlighted by Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address, the name “Charles Anderson” is vaguely familiar. Following the formal dedicatory events at the cemetery, Abraham Lincoln attended a political rally sponsored by the State of Ohio that featured a speech by lieutenant governor–elect Charles Anderson. Newspapers mentioned the program, and a few published a quote or two from Anderson, but apart from that the speech had been lost to time.

In 2002 the original speech was found among the family papers in Wyoming. In The Lost Gettysburg Address: Charles Anderson’s Civil War Odyssey, David Dixon reconstructs the man and his speech. He contends, “By considering the major orations that came before and after the president’s brief remarks, one may better understand the purpose of Lincoln’s speech and the political strategy behind all three addresses in promoting the administration’s wartime agenda” (4).

Dixon’s biographical format follows his subject from birth to death. Anderson was born in 1814 into a prominent Kentucky slave-owning family. One of his seventeen siblings was Robert Anderson, the famed future defender of Fort Sumter. Anderson attended Miami University, in Oxford, Ohio, graduating in 1833. After a failed stint as a farmer, he turned to the law and settled in Dayton in 1835. He disdained mundane office tasks but excelled in front of a jury. Anderson was elected to the state senate in 1844. According to Dixon, “the problem with Anderson, as his peers saw it, was that he stood so firm on principle while ignoring the cardinal rules of…artful compromise and prescient timing” (40). Anderson was a follower of Henry Clay and believed that preserving the Union was the political goal to which every other impulse should be subordinated.

In 1859, Anderson moved to San Antonio, Texas, seeking economic opportunity. In 1860, he supported the Constitutional Union Party of John Bell and Edward Everett, believing that the triumph of any other ticket would tear the nation asunder. Anderson was active in local politics but saw his efforts go for naught when Texas seceded from the Union. Before Anderson could return north, he was arrested by Confederate authorities and detained in San Antonio. Three Union sympathizers arranged his escape to Mexico, where he was reunited with his family.

Arriving in New York City, Charles was celebrated as the second southern-born Anderson brother to defy the Confederates. After a brief speaking tour in New England, he traveled to Great Britain at Abraham Lincoln’s request to advocate that nation’s neutrality. Finding the British ambivalent toward the preservation of the Union, Anderson soon returned home, believing he had accomplished little.

In the summer of 1862, Anderson became colonel of the newly formed 93rd Ohio. He performed well and suffered two slight wounds at the Battle of Stone’s River at Murfreesboro, Tennessee, before resigning in February 1863 due to ongoing health problems. That fall, in one of the nastiest gubernatorial elections in U.S. history, a Union Party ticket, headed by John Brough and featuring Charles Anderson as lieutenant governor, prevailed over war opponent Clement Vallandigham. It was as lieutenant governor–elect that Anderson traveled with the Ohio delegation to Gettysburg. The Ohioans arranged a meeting in the Gettysburg Presbyterian Church, to take place after the formal cemetery dedication ceremonies had concluded, and Anderson was tapped to make the main speech.

Anderson “stood in the church at Gettysburg as an unyielding apostle of Unionism” who “vowed to crush the rebellion at any cost” and “was fiery and provocative” (157). He feared that an independent Confederacy would turn the Union into a military state. On slavery, he stated, “I am willing—to tolerate this monster-disease and crime within the Union.… But Slavery in an adjacent Foreign State, must be fought without respite or forbearance” (215). Why? “If...