[6] However, he joined a temporary artillery company in albemarle County, composed of other disabled veterans, and briefly returned to fight against Union General Hunter.

During the war, the disabled younger Anderson completed his education, and continued in his father's career path following the conflict, by attending the University of Virginia Law School and graduating in 1866.

[2] A member of the state executive committee of the Democratic Party for many years, Anderson first won election to the Senate of Virginia, representing Rockbridge, Bath and Alleghany counties (part-time) for single term, from 1869 to 1873.

[8] "In 1870, Anderson was credited with introducing the bill establishing the public school system of Virginia as put forth by Dr. William Henry Ruffner.

"[9] Nearly a decade later, Rockbridge County voters elected Anderson one of their representatives (also part-time), in the Virginia House of Delegates, so from 1883 to 1885 he served alongside Matthew W. Paxton (of a family which had previously sent other members to the House of Delegates), but voters refused to re-elect either man, replacing them with Charles F. Jordan and Jacob W. Arnold in 1885, whose terms also proved solitary.

[11] In 1899, Anderson became president of the Virginia Bar Association, and made disenfranchisement of African Americans the subject of his presidential address.

[14] Anderson became one of the convention's key members, in part because he came prepared with methods used by other Southern states to circumvent the Fifteenth Amendment's prohibition against denying men the right to vote based on their race or previous condition of servitude.

When a man convicted of housebreaking in Augusta County complained that his trial for a felony without a jury was defective, Attorney General Anderson defended the conviction before the Virginia Supreme Court, and Justice George Moffett Harrison pronounced the new constitution valid, since it was accepted by the governor and legislature and all judges took oaths to support it.