The Lost Gettysburg Address (17 page)

Lincoln’s task was difficult yet straightforward. He needed to keep
Great Britain and the other European powers neutral. To do this, he
needed to employ deft diplomacy while shaping British public
opinion.
Charles Francis Adams was the kind of skilled diplomat that
Anderson had always admired. The son of
John Quincy Adams and
grandson of John Adams, Adams was a distinguished politician in
his own right.
Lincoln pulled Adams from his congressional seat and
appointed him Minister to the Court of St. James in May 1861. After
the Trent affair had died down, the question of British recognition of
the Confederate government persisted at the forefront of public
discourse. Adams and Lincoln needed influential men to publish articles
in the newspapers and give speeches supporting neutrality.
⁶

Charles Anderson was a logical emissary and took on the job
willingly. He left New York on March 29 aboard the
Glasgow
. He had
waited more than a week for a letter of introduction from the
president, which he never received. When Anderson dined with Winfield
Scott a few days before his departure, Scott suggested that the U.S.
government ought to pay his expenses. “I’ll see them damned first,”
was Anderson’s reply. He was going to England at Lincoln’s request
but would not be his hired man. Anderson would do what he did
best: speak the truth and help restore the Union, no matter what the
political implications might be.

The mission was short and fruitless, however. Anderson made
some progress in social circles. During the month of April he
introduced various English gentlemen who supported the Union to
Minister Adams, but London newspapers declined to publish any of
his articles. By May 2, he was already frustrated and felt he had little
productive work to do. He stayed in London a few more weeks and
made several speeches at the request of British politician John Bright.
After a six-day holiday in France, Anderson returned home with
bitter feelings toward the British. “They wish our nation ruined,” he
lamented. “The liberals sympathize with us, but mainly to end
slavery.  .  .  .  They are all fools on this subject.” He was sick of politics,
fed up with diplomacy, and frustrated that he had wasted his efforts.
It was time to make a tangible contribution toward saving the Union
he so adored.
⁷

W
HEN
CHARLES ANDERSON
arrived back in Ohio, he had
a job waiting for him. New governor David Tod began
his term in January 1862. Three months later, the state
suffered more than two thousand casualties at the horrific Battle of
Shiloh, Tennessee. Faced with filling his federally mandated quota of
seventy-four thousand troops,
Tod needed leaders who could raise
regiments. He guessed that Anderson, with so many family members
involved in the fighting, could not resist this call to duty.

Tod was right.
Anderson proved as effective a recruiter as he was
a speaker. Recruiting posters painted a romantic picture of what was
to come for Anderson’s new
Ninety-Third Ohio Volunteer Infantry:
“An Anderson is at our head, We follow where he leads, And in our
Paths of Glory, Will be traced most Noble Deeds.” Neighbors and
friends from Montgomery, Preble, and Butler Counties rushed to
enlist. The regiment met its quota in just two weeks, with four
companies coming from Dayton. Citizens there raised ten thousand dollars
at one meeting to help equip the troops. Few of the volunteers had
any military training.
¹

On August 9, Anderson himself enlisted and was awarded the
rank of colonel. His previous military experience consisted of two
years commanding a local militia called the Dayton Grays. He threw
himself into his work, studying military tactics from the same
manuals that his brother and son had used at West Point. Despite his
intelligence and diligence, however, Anderson was woefully ill-prepared,
like so many of his fellow officers, to lead an army into combat. What
he did have were some of the intangibles that successful military
leaders possess. His men loved, respected, and trusted him. In a war
where so many thousands of ordinary citizens were being thrust into
hellish conditions with inadequate training and support, this would
have to be enough.
²

The Union Army’s situation in Kentucky and Tennessee in the
summer of 1862 was perilous. Confederate
John Hunt Morgan was
wreaking havoc all over the region with his daring cavalry raids on
federal positions. On July 13, general
Nathan Bedford Forrest’s rebel
troops overwhelmed Union general
Thomas Crittenden’s force at
Murfreesboro, capturing a startling number of men and supply
wagons. While Confederate major general
Edmund Kirby Smith menaced
Union positions in Kentucky, fellow general Braxton Bragg pushed
into Tennessee. Union major general
Don Carlos Buell and his Army
of the Ohio faced the important task of halting the Confederate
advance well short of the Ohio River.
³

Anderson established a camp within sight of his Dayton home and
began training his regiment. After just a week of drilling, the call
came. Buell’s army needed all available men, ready or not. Anderson
ordered all furloughed men to report to the regiment immediately.
On August 20, the regiment mustered in to service. Three days later,
the 39 officers and 929 enlisted men of the Ninety-Third Ohio finally
received their arms and departed for Lexington, Kentucky. By the
time Anderson’s troops reached Cincinnati by train from Dayton, it
was past eleven in the evening. The Ninety-Third Ohio stepped off
the train, formed into some semblance of order, and marched to the
river. The regiment took the ferry across to Covington, where the
exhausted volunteers arrived about two o’clock in the morning. Having
had no food since leaving Dayton, the soldiers simply collapsed on a
pile of boards or on bare ground and slept until daybreak. It was a
harsh beginning to their romantic dreams of glory. Most would look
back on this first journey, however, as one of their easiest.
⁴

The next day, the regiment boarded a train to Lexington, arrived
in midafternoon, and marched to their assigned camp. They had not
eaten since early that morning. Despite an alluring grove of trees just
off the road, the men obeyed orders to lie down on either side of
the turnpike. The previous morning’s defeat of
General Ormsby M.
Mitchel’s Union Army division about twenty miles from their present
location had Anderson on high alert. The colonel lay down beside the
road alongside his officers for a much needed rest. They slumbered
for about an hour before they awoke to three rifle reports. One of the
Union pickets had fired shots about fifty yards from where Anderson
was sleeping. He jumped on his horse and galloped down the road as
his officers ordered the men to fall in. Confusion reigned. When he
returned a few minutes later, the colonel explained that some Union
cavalry had ridden up the road toward the regiment, and failing to
hear the command to “halt,” had been fired upon. Fortunately, the
only casualty was a hole in the cavalry lieutenant’s coat. The
regiment stood down into an uneasy rest and the officers wondered how
their men would have reacted in a real emergency.

When they finally settled in at their fairground camp adjacent to
Transylvania College in Lexington, the men were again in good
spirits. Their baggage had finally arrived. The surrounding countryside
was described by one soldier as “the garden spot of Kentucky”
because of its attractive farmsteads. For five days, the soldiers enjoyed
the first cooked food they had eaten since leaving Ohio. Anderson
was appointed commander of the post at Lexington and camp life
seemed pretty good. Late in the evening of August 30, however,
General William “Bull” Nelson gave Anderson orders to
move.
⁵

The Ninety-Third Ohio, two other regiments, and nineteen
wagons, all under Anderson’s command, advanced toward Richmond,
Kentucky, all night, arriving on the bluffs of the Kentucky River
eleven miles from the town at about four o’clock in the morning.
Anderson sent one company forward as pickets and they came back
with terrible news: a rebel force of nearly seven thousand commanded
by
Major General Edmund Kirby Smith was on the opposite side of
the river. Instead of falling back and joining Anderson’s regiments as
ordered by Nelson,
U.S. brigadier general Mahlon D. Manson had
engaged the enemy at Richmond and was routed. Nelson slashed at
some of his troops with his saber when they began to retreat. The
Union Army suffered 5,353 casualties, while the Confederates lost
just 451 men. Anderson’s regiments were given three hours to rest
before being marched back to Lexington. A thunder shower drenched
the troops and they arrived back in camp at ten o’clock at night. The
soggy men grumbled as they were immediately ordered to
counter-march to the farm of James B. Clay, where they ate some hard bread
and finally laid down on the bare earth at midnight.
Captain Samuel
B. Smith of Company K called these troops “the most woe-be-gone,
demoralized force I ever saw.”
⁶

The sun shone the next morning, September 1, and for a few hours
the mood of the troops brightened too. Then orders came to unload
all of the baggage from the wagons except for food and cooking
utensils. The troops formed a line of battle with one change of clothes in
their haversacks, plus canteens, guns, and cartridge boxes. While they
were drilling, some of the troops noticed smoke billowing about three
hundred yards behind them.
Captain Henry Richards of the
Ninety-Third Ohio Infantry broke ranks and ran over the hill to see what
was happening. To his dismay, he found that
Union general Green
Clay Smith had panicked and ordered all the baggage burnt,
presumably to speed the retreat of his troops. Meanwhile,
Confederate
general Kirby Smith, fresh off his victory at Richmond, was
advancing toward Lexington. Buell thought that if General Bragg captured
Louisville, not only would Kentucky be lost but Cincinnati itself
would be subject to invasion. Anderson’s troops expected a battle.
What they got was a footrace.

The evacuation of Lexington began around midnight. It took five
days for ten thousand men to travel the fifty-two miles in oppressive
heat. The scarcity of running water forced the soldiers to drink from
whatever scum-topped stock ponds they could find. Ninety men fell
by the wayside from exhaustion and thirst. Stragglers were captured
by the enemy. Henry Richards did not mince words when describing
the morale of the troops under
General Nelson. “This march has been
conducted in the most unchristian and inhuman manner,” Richards
wrote to his father from Louisville. He chastised Nelson for avoiding
a fight and attributed his incompetence to “a great lack of courage
or capacity.” He worried that Colonel Anderson had taken ill; if he
were to leave the regiment, Richards predicted, it would constitute
its “death blow,” as Anderson was “the only field officer having the
confidence of the men.”
⁷

Anderson arrived in his native county in bad shape. The incessant
movements of the past few weeks had left him exhausted. His asthma
was back, accompanied by an even more dangerous condition: he had
cholera. Forced to his bed, Anderson transferred command of his
regiment to Colonel Hiram Strong. Of Anderson’s insomnia, Dr. A. T.
Babbitt said that “he marched every night in the effect of the quinine.”
He was not well enough to resume his duties for eighteen days. Eliza
and the family went to visit their sick patriarch. Morale among the
troops began to recover. While the Union generals waited a month for
Bragg and Smith to mount an attack,
Larz Anderson was given thirty
thousand dollars to oversee the building of defenses on the north
banks of the Ohio River. Ohio’s citizens held their collective breaths.
⁸

Colonel Strong had strong opinions concerning his current corps
of leaders.
General William Thomas Ward, the brigade commander,
was “thick headed.” Strong called division commander
General
James S. Jackson a “blustering, drinking, swearing bully.” Strong
and Anderson were elated when Buell’s main force finally arrived at
Louisville. The Ninety-Third was transferred to
General Lovell H.
Rousseau’s acclaimed brigade in
General Joshua W. Sill’s division.
Anderson returned to the regiment in late September.

Criticism of
General Nelson was also widespread among officers
and enlisted men. He made enemies easily, and one of these was
fellow
Union general Jefferson C. Davis. Nelson had suspended Davis
over a recruiting issue, but
General Horatio Gates ordered Davis
returned to his command. They met at Gait House in Louisville, where
Indiana governor Oliver P. Morton and others witnessed their brief
reunion. Davis approached Nelson and accused him of exceeding his
authority when the brigadier general suspended him. Nelson put his
hand over his ear and refused to listen. At that point Davis repeated
himself, drawing two slaps across the face from Nelson. “Did you
hear that damned rascal insult me?” Davis cried as he stormed out of
the room. He returned from the ladies parlor with a pistol and shot
Nelson through the heart. It was the only instance in American
history when one general had murdered another.
⁹

Davis was arrested and set to be tried in Jefferson County court.
Reaction to Nelson’s death, however, was muted. On September 30,
the day following the shooting, Anderson wrote to his wife about
the affair. Although Nelson had always treated him with respect,
Anderson felt that Davis was “entirely justified in killing him.”
Nelson had no right to “trample upon the rights or even the pride of
others,” Charles reasoned. He consoled Davis and told him that he
“sympathized with the living as well as regretting the dead.” Buell
and other military authorities may have agreed, as Davis was never
prosecuted for the murder.