OH-FOOTSTEPS-L Archives

From: "Maggie Stewart" <>
Subject: Fw: Chapter 42 - Part B (Abbott's History of Ohio)
Date: Sat, 12 Feb 2000 22:08:37 -0500

----- Original Message -----
From: Kay L. Mason <>

Chapter 42, pt. B

Charles, thus thwarted in his favorite pursuit, and being of enthusiastic
and restless of mind, was anxious to enter the army. But his friends so
strenuously remonstrated against this course, that he relinquished the plan.
He then resolved to turn trapper. His imagination was captivated by the
thought
of exploring the sublime solitudes of the Rocky Mountains, of paddling in
the
birch canoe over the crystal waters of rivers hitherto unexplored and
nameless,
of sharing the hospitality of the Indians in their wigwams, and of gaining
wealth by the rich furs he should take, and which ever found a ready sale in
the St. Louis market. But in opposition to these wild dreams of youth his
judicious friends again so vigorously interposed, that he felt constrained
to
abandon this enterprise also.
Thus bitterly disappointed, there seemed to be no resource left for him
but to study law. Eight of the sons and sons-in-law of Colonel Richard
Clough
Anderson were lawyers. Charles returned to Louisville and entered himself as
a student in the distinguished firm of Pirtle & Anderson. He was a young man
of genius, of brilliant parts, with a great command of language, and a
intuitive
power of disentangling intricacies. We infer, from the whole of his career,
that patient, plodding industry was not the most prominent of his virtues.
In the year 1835, having completed his law studies, he went to Dayton,
and
on the 16th of September was married to Miss Eliza Jane Brown, a young lady
whom he met three years before, at his college commencement, and for whom he
had formed a strong attachment.
Dayton was a pleasant, growing place, and Mr. Anderson decided to remain
and open an office there. He had but little zeal in his profession, and was
inspired with no glowing desire to become distinguished. For ten years he
remained in Dayton, half lawyer and half farmer, but ever displaying a
strength
of moral principle, a magnanimity and calm independence of character which
was for him the increasing respect of the community.
What was called the township of Dayton then comprehended not only the
present
Dayton, but Van Buren, Harrison and Mud River Townships. Mr. Anderson, in
consequence of his earnest advocacy of popular education, was elected Town
Clerk and Superintendent of the Common Schools. To carry into vigorous
effect
the new school law of 1836, he traversed the whole of this wide region on
foot, taking a census of the entire population. Soon after he was elected
Prosecuting Attorney of his county. In 1844 he became a member of the State
Senate. Here the moral courage which conspicuously marked his life was
displayed, in being the first man in Ohio who dared to propose and vote for
the repeal of the cruel law which disqualified colored men for appearing as
witnesses in legal trials.
The pro-slavery spirit was then so rampant in our land that for this act
Mr. Anderson was bitterly denounced as an abolitionist and a fool. It is
said but a single one of his contituents ever expressed to him any
commendation
for this legislative act. Being a man of exquisite taste, by nature endowed
with a remarkable love of the fine arts, especially of architecture, he was
heartily ashamed of the old state house, and gave the grand jury no peace
until they presented it as a nuisance, and it was replaced by the present
beautiful and classical edifice. His influence undoubtedly also originated
the
park between Second and Third Streets, which now embellishes the city. For
his distinguished services, in those respects, the citizens of Columbus
presented him with two beautiful canes.
During his senatorial term, Mr. Anderson's health failed from very severe
attacks of asthma. As the disaster baffled the efforts of our ablest
physicians,
he undertook a voyage to Europe, to place himself under the care of the
renowned Dr. Priessnitz, the discoverer of the water-cure treatment, in
Grafenberg, Austria-Silesia. This led him to an unusually extensive European
tour.
He descended the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers to New Orleans. Thence he
took
a sail vessel to Havana. At that port he embarked for Barcelona, Spain, by
the way of the Azores. Fortunately he entered this interesting and beautiful
city as the populace were in a state of great excitement in receiving their
young Queen Isabella, with her splendid court. The Queen and her younger
sister, the Dutchess of Montpensier, were then in their teens. The
queen-mother
was also present. It was a very brilliant display of royalty; far different
from any thing to which American eyes have been accustomed.
But Mr. Anderson was far too severe a republican to be dazzled by this
display which was mainly, to his mind, indicative of the ignorance and
impoverishment of the people. But he was intensely interested in the
architectural splender of this magnificent city. The old palace of the Kings
of Aragon rose before him, a majestic pile of grandeur. The great cathedral,
with its windows of gorgeously stained glass, presented one of the finest
specimens of Gothic architecture. And the celebrated promenade, the Rambla,
which the wealth of ages had embellished, opened to his view scenes which
must have been surpassingly attractive to one born and bred beyond the
Alleghenies. As by a step, he had passed from all the freshness of the
wilderness of the new world, to all the sublimity of the time-worn memorials
of the most ancient days.
We have not space here to describe the incidents of his continued tour,
every hour of which was replete with intensest interest. He passed the
beautiful
province of Catalonia, whose early history is lost in the maze of the past.
In imagination the conquering legions of Rome passed before him; then the
shaggy wolfish hordes of the Goths. They were followed by the agile Moors,
with blood-dripping cimeters, as war's most horrid billows swept over the
doomed land.
He crossed the Pyrenees; visited Montpelier, Nismes, Narbonne, and
Avignon.
Every city and almost every mile of the way were crowded with the most
exciting historic events to a mind familiar with the past.
At Avignon he took a steamboat and descended the rapid Rhone to
Marcelles.
The boats then upon the river were very different from the floating palaces
which now adorn our great streams. They were about one hundred feet long
and twenty-five feet wide. In their general appointments they were scarcely
equal to our canal packets. The pilot stood at the helm with the tiller in
his hand. These boats could make but four miles an hour against the stream,
and fourteen with its aid.
But the scenery was enchanting, unsurpassed perhaps in picturesque beauty
by that of any other river on the globe. The stream wound its way through
continued vineyards, sheltered by mountains rising from five hundred to two
thousand feet. Every variety of landscape charms now presented. The
eminences
assumed every imaginable form; now rugged, now smooth. Again a space most
gloomily sterile, would be succeeded by Eden-like luxuriance and bloom, as
the terraced eminences were cultivated to their summits. Through the breaks
in the mountains the snow-clad summits of the Alps could be seen in the
distance, rising majestically to the skies. Often the river would be so
enclosed by hills that one could not imagine where it had escaped. There was
almost an unbroken line of large towns, villages, hamlets, cottages,
beautiful
villas, and baronial castles, with their battlemented walls and massive
towers, reaching back from the river's bank to the mountains. The valley,
sometimes contracted to a mile in width, would again expand into a plain of
marvelous luxuriance ten or twelve miles broad.
We describe these scenes thus minutely, since they afford so striking a
contrast to anything which could then or even now can be seen on the Ohio,
the Scioto, or the Miami. After spending ten days at Marcelles, he passed on
to Genoa, Rome, Naples, Syracuse, Aetna, Malta, Corfu, the Gulf of Lepanto,
Athens, the Isles of Greece, Smyrna and Constantinople.
From this most wonderful city he passed through perhaps the most
attractive
sheet of water on the globe to the Black Sea. Then he ascended the whole
course of the Danube, touching at every place of interest, until he reached
Vienna. At all these places he devote the most eager attention to the study
of the fine arts. He particularly enjoyed the rich music of the highly
cultivated
bands and choirs of those regions.
From Vienna he explored the battle-fields of Wagram and Austerlitz;
visited
Olmutz, renowned as the seat of La Fayette's five years of captivity; and
thence to Grafenburg. Here he soon found his health materially improved.
After
spending six weeks, subject to the water-cure treatment, he passed through
Saxon-Switzerland to Prague. While descending the River Elbe in a
canal-packet
he made the acquaintance of the Grand Duke of Saxe-Weimar.
The duke had traveled in this country. Thought doubtless glad that an
ocean three thousand miles in breadth rolled between republican America and
his baronial halls, he was exceedingly interested in what he saw here, so
totally different from anything he had ever witnessed, or even conceived of,
in his own land. He said that he had called upon Governor Jeremiah Morrow,
of Ohio. He found the governor, in the coarse garb of a common laborer,
wearing
a red flannel shirt, at work burning the brush in a clearing. His hands and
his face were besmeared with charcoal.
The duke, from his ancestral halls, ever clothed in regal purple,
surrounded
with the splendors and almost idolarous obsequiousness of feudel homage,
must
have gazed upon such a spectacle with the greatest astonishment. He
expressed
much admiration for Ohio's model governor; but it is very certain that he
had
no wish to imitate his example.
From Dresden Mr. Anderson passed through Leipsic, Weimar, Frankfort, to
Weisbaden, and thence down that beautiful river where
"The castled crags of Drachenfels,
>From o'er the wide and winding Rhine."
Tarrying a short time at innumerable places of interest, he spent a week in
Paris, and, crossing over to Liverpool, took passage in a Cunard steamer for
his native land. As he returned to his home, from this instructive tour,
with
health greatly renovated, he removed to Cincinnati and entered into
partnership,
for the practice of his profession, with Rufus King, Esq. For eleven years
he continued in the busy offices of the bar. His health again failing, he
decided to seek a milder climate.
His original farming propensities still clung to him. He went to Texas,
there to imitate the lives of the patriarchs, amidst his herds, in raising
horses and mules. He had ever been an earnest Henry Clay Whig, and was much
opposed to the actions of the Democratic party in its attempts to annex
Texas
as a measure of slavery propagandism. When he reached Texas he soon found
that
all the prominent men there, and the masses of people, were fanatically
excited
in favor of a dissolution of the Union, and the establishment of a new
government for the Southern States, with monarchiacal forms, and based on
slavery. They would seek the protectorate of England; send their cotton to
England, and receive goods of English manufacture in return.
This was in 1859. His discerning mind soon perceived that there was a
widely-organized and treasonable conspiracy to accomplish this end. Rapidly
the treason made headway among the ignorant masses of the South. The plan
adopted was very cunning. The South, while seemingly opposed to the election
of any northern candidate opposed to slavery to the Presidency, was to lend
its secret aid for such a result. There was no term which could be uttered
to the southern mind more full of opprobium than that of Abolitionist.
Having
elected one not friendly to the extension of slavery, they could then
declare
it to have been a northern measure, and, appealing to southern fanaticism,
would call loudly for a dissolution of the Union, on the ground that as an
Abolitionist was in the Presidential chair, the safety of the South demanded
the dissolution of the Union.
Mr. Anderson, with moral courage rarely surpassed, and with integrity
worthy of all praise, opposed these suicidal measures, when he stood alone
exposed to the fury of pro-slavery fanaticism. Revolutions bring the dregs
of
society to its surface. Mr. Anderson received anonymous letters threatening
him with assassination and every conceivable indignity. There was a large
gathering of the secessionists at San Antonio, Texas, on the 20th of
November,
1860. Many inflammatory speeches were made. Mr. Anderson then addressed the
excited multitude in a strain of patriotic eloquence rarely surpassed. We
have room but for one short extract:
"We have truly fallen upon evil times. A meeting of American citizens is
here solemnly convened, seriously to discuss and decide the further
existance
of our blessed Union. And has it indeed come to this? Has the madness of
faction, the virulence of fanaticism, at last reached this point? Have
sectional
partisans finally dared to make or devise an assault upon this beloved and
most glorious Union which our fathers of the South and the North shed their
united blood to cement and establish; which our mothers blessed in the
earliest
prayers of our infancy; which nurtured and protected our first and best
years,
and which, under God's providence, is, I trust destined to be to our
children's
children, to the latest generation of mankind, the very greatest boon and
blessing which human minds and hands ever planned and executed, or which the
Divine will has ever permitted.
"Oh, may it stand, my friends, as deep in the earth and as high in the
air
as the grandest mountains; as wide and glorious as old ocean, and as
enclosing
and vitalizing to its generations as the circumambient air. Whilst ever
these
fair, blue and bended skies, with their kindling lights of day and night,
shall surround our earth, may this dear Union of our native land continue to
encompass us and ours forever."
There was, perhaps, not another man in Texas who would have had the moral
courage to make such a speech on this occasion. There were many noble Union
men there, but they could not express their sentiments but at the peril of
their lives. Such men were continually visited by a vigilance committee,
tarred and feathered, and hung. The most prominent man in these murders was
one of the wealthiest citizens of San Antonio, and a prominent member of the
Methodist Church.
Notwithstanding this bold denunciation of treason and traitors, Mr.
Anderson's
dignity of character and high reputation for integrity and honor, were such
that even the most fanatic secessionists did not venture immediately to
assail
him. But ere long the Confederate Congress, at Richmond, passed a law
allowing
forty days for any citizen of the United States, and who still adhered to
the
United States, to leave the Southern Confederacy, or else to be thereafter
subject to the pains and penalties of treason.
Mr. Anderson was compelled to abandon his property, disposing of it at
whatever sacrifice. He could not with any safety run the gauntley of the
Confederate States. He therefore started for home by way of Mexico. He was
pursued by an armed force, captured and brought back to Antonio. Here he was
imprisoned, and his life was in great peril. There was in San Antonio an
aged
and friendless widow, Mrs. Ann C. Ludlum, who loved "the dear old flag,"
and who revered the man who so nobly defended it. Her heart was moved with
the most tender sympathy for the imperiled stranger.
This heroic woman enlisted the services of an equally heroic and noble
German, Mr. T. Z. Houzeau, and actually accomplished Mr. Anderson's escape.
And this they did while fully conscious that if they should be detected in
this, their deed of heavenly mercy, they would surely die upon the gibbet.
Ere long Mrs. Ludlum's undisguised love for the Union caused her to be drive
n
from her home into Mexico. The names of Ludlum and Houzeau, Americans should
ever remember and honor.
Mr. Anderson, through many perils, succeeded in reaching the Northern
states.
England, not unwilling to see our Union broken up, was in sympathy with the
rebels. Mr. Anderson was urged to go to England, and by lectures there to
endeavor to turn the tide of British public opinion and feeling in regard to
the whole question. The special necessity for this service seemed to be the
impending crisis caused by the seizing by Commodore Wilkes of Mason and
Slidell. To this end he was furnished with the best possible testimonials to
the Hon. Charles Francis Adams, then our very able Minister Plenipotentiary
to the Court of St. James, as also to Messrs. Cobden and Hope, Miss
Martineau,
and many other influential personages of England. The result we give in the
language of another. We give it without comment, simply as a very clear
explanation of his failure in England.
"But he soon found that the American affairs had already been
superabundantly
discussed by Mr. Train and others; and moreover that the particular class,
who, in that stage of the question, were at all amenable to influence in
favor
of the Union party, was far more alive to the black philanthropy than to the
white civilization of the case. Whereas, of course, with much sympathy for
the
slaves, and a decided opinion that slaveholders should lose, and would
forever
lose that property, he could not honestly put himself in accord with the
current ideas of that class, that slavery could qualify its victims, the
slaves, to equal rights of suffrage in the new and stupendous issues then
immenent in the great trial of Republical institutions.
"For the rest, he frankly advised his friends over the water, that
between
these sentiments, in so far as they were separable, patriotism was with him
a very far stronger passion than philosophy. As between the two classes, if
forced to make an election, he was compelled to prefer his own color and
race to the African or any other. For those reasons he gave up all ideas of
delivering his course of lectures upon the rebellion to the British people.
Treating this loss of time and money, therefore, as another vain sacrifice
to that cause of his country which had ever been his religion, he again
returned
to the United States."
It was not to have been expected that Mr. Anderson, born in Kentucky, and
from infancy surrounded by slaves and breathing the atmosphere of slavery,
could have regarded that subject as it was looked upon in the North by
millions
who had never seen a slave. Returning to America, Mr. Anderson was appointed
colonel of the 93rd Regiment of Ohio Volunteers, as gallant a band as
patriotism
ever sent into the battle-field.
But we have not space to enter the details of his military service, of
his
chivalric courage, his wounds, and his almost miraculous escape from death
at the battle of Stone River. Wounds, and the exhaustion of this terrible
campaining, so impaired his health that he was compelled to resign his
commission. But he now stood so high in the esteem of his fellow citizens
that he was soon chosen Lieutenant Governor of Ohio. Governor Brough was the
Chief Executive. His sudden death transferred Colonel Anderson to the
gubernatorial chair, and he became the Governor of Ohio. Thus he took his
position in the ranks of that long line of noble men whose administrative
ability has raised Ohio to the proud position which the imperial state now
occupies.
At the close of the war Governor Anderson advocated immediate and general
amnesty. He was strongly opposed to that impartial ballot which disclaimed
all the tests of color. This led him to pass into the ranks of the
Democratic
party. Upon retiring from the officer of governor, with fortune much
diminished
by the war, he removed to Kentucky, and settled upon a large iron estate
upon
the Cumberland River in Lyon County. Here he now lives, in 1874, in the
seclusion of private life, revered and beloved by all who know him.

This thread:

• Fw: Chapter 42 - Part B (Abbott's History of Ohio) by "Maggie Stewart" <>