The Lost Gettysburg Address by David T. Dixon

shrink from sudden
metamorphosis by invaded nymphdom.” 4
    By 1858, Anderson had contracted yet another strong affliction,
which his sister-in-lawCatherine 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 hisbrother’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 immigrantWilliam 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