An anthropologist becomes an accidental historian
IU East’s Rob Tolley illuminates history of the Battle of Gettysburg
By Hali Cartee, Published October 27, 2006
The Battle of Gettyburg took place on July 1-3, 1863, and 50,000 died amidst the rolling hills of Pennsylvania. On Nov. 19 of that year, President Abraham Lincoln’s address at Gettysburg was short and stunning in its simplicity. But Ohio Lt. Gov.-elect Charles Anderson’s speech was classic oratory. He used flowery language and classical references. The 39-page, hand-written Johnson speech, only recently discovered, discussed the bravery of the soldiers who died at Gettysburg and provided significant arguments for continuation of the Civil War.
Happenstance has turned archeologist Rob Tolley into an accidental historian and given him the opportunity to contribute to a better understanding of the Gettysburg Consecration Ceremonies of Nov. 19, 1863. It was at that event that Abraham Lincoln gave his famous Gettysburg Address.
The IU East anthropology senior lecturer has been working with the personal papers of Civil War-era Ohio Gov. Charles Anderson. Tolley received boxes of family documents from long-time friends, Bartley and Rose Skinner of Pinedale, Wyo.; Bartley Skinner is a great-grandson of Anderson.
The boxes contained 300 personal letters, papers and documents dating from the 1820s to the 1890s. Tolley first documented and cataloged the collection, and then arranged for the donation of the collection to the archives of the Ohio Historical Society and Miami University in Oxford, Ohio.
Anderson had graduated from Miami in 1833. His hand-written senior speech, given during his graduation, was also found in the collection. By coincidence, Tolley is also a graduate of Miami University.
The real “find” in the collection was the full, hand-written version of the speech delivered by then-Lt.Gov.-elect Charles Anderson at Gettysburg, Pa.
Tolley’s research has revealed that the speech was never published in full, and that the hand-written version may be the only full text of the speech in existence.
 Photo by Chris Meyer
This bronze head of Abraham Lincoln was sculpted by Gutzon Borglum, the artist who also sculpted the faces on Mount Rushmore. An extensive collection of Lincolniana may be seen in the Lincoln Room of the Lilly Library in Bloomington.
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According to Tolley, after President Lincoln gave the Gettysburg Address, participants retired to a local dignitary’s home for refreshments prior to attending Anderson’s speech in the evening. The speech was given at the Gettysburg Presbyterian Church and was attended by Lincoln and all of the other dignitaries at the day’s events.
“This wasn’t a fringe activity going on while the bigwigs did something else,” Tolley said. “This was an event organized by the State of Ohio. It was an important and concluding event to the day’s ceremonies. Anderson was selected to give the speech because of his reputation as an orator and because of his strong pro-Union positions.”
The speech was untitled and is written in a legal notebook. “I thought that the speech was significant, as it had themes of a memorial to Civil War dead,” Tolley said. “It took some research, but I was able to confirm that this is a full-text version of Anderson’s Gettysburg speech. Anderson never says the word ‘Gettysburg’ in his speech and does not provide details of the battle. Several newspapers did publish excerpts of the speech, and they match up perfectly to this document.”
The document now is brown-toned because of age, but the handwriting is still very legible. While writing the speech, Anderson did significant editing, so the document will allow historians to see what he added and eliminated from the text.
The 39-page speech discusses the bravery of the soldiers who died at Gettysburg, and provided significant arguments for continuation of the war.
“Having the original, full-text version of the speech may not change Gettysburg history, but it will further illuminate a forgotten event at the consecration ceremonies,” Tolley said. “Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address was short and transformed speech-making from that point on. Anderson’s speech was classic entertainment oratory. He used flowery language and classical references. Where Lincoln’s speech only used 272 words, Anderson’s speech had a sentence that was 252. At the time, people attended such speeches as a form of entertainment. Anderson definitely accomplished this.”
Tolley has transcribed the speech and arranged the donation of the original to the Ohio Historical Society. It is now available to researchers and scholars.
He is working with historians from Kuttawa, Ky., a community founded by Anderson, to help them gain a better understanding of their founder and his place in national history.
Tolley will be the keynote speaker at the American Association of Behavioral and Social Sciences annual meeting Feb. 8-9 in Las Vegas. He will discuss Anderson’s Gettysburg speech and its historical significance.
