Announcing our 546th Meeting
Sunday, November 17, 2019

The Lost Gettysburg Address

Presented  by David Dixon

         
David Dixon earned his M.A. in history from the University of Massachusetts in 2003. He has published numerous articles in scholarly journals and magazines. Most focus on Union sympathizers in the Civil War South. 

David spoke at the 2016 Sacred Trust Talks in Gettysburg and has delivered nearly 100 talks to audiences across the country. He appeared on Civil War Talk Radio and other podcasts. He hosts B-List History, a website that features obscure characters and their compelling stories. You may download free pdf versions of his published articles on that website at www.davidtdixon.com.

David’s latest book is the biography of German revolutionary and Union General August Willich and will be published by the University of Tennessee Press in September 2020. It highlights the contributions of more than 180,000 German-American immigrants to the Union effort in the Civil War. Transatlantic radicals like Willich viewed the war as part of a much larger, global revolution for social justice and republican government. David is currently writing a biography of U.S. and Confederate Congressman Augustus Wright of Georgia.

The Lost Gettysburg Address

Few remember Edward Everett's oration that preceded Lincoln's famous address, but hardly anyone is aware of Kentucky native Charles Anderson's oration, which concluded the day's events. The speech was never published, and the lost manuscript only recently uncovered at a ranch in Wyoming.  Dixon argues that the three featured speeches of November 19, 1863 need to be viewed as a rhetorical ensemble to better understand the political context of the Gettysburg dedication.  The back story to this is the saga of Anderson himself, a slaveholder who sacrificed nearly everything to help Lincoln save the Union. An escapee from a Confederate prison in Texas, he became Lincoln's emissary to Great Britain. He then nearly died commanding a Union regiment at Stones River. He eventually became governor of Ohio. These are just some of his amazing adventures during the war.