History of Upson County Georgia United States of America

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John Brown Gordon, governor of Georgia, was bore in Upson county, Ga., Feb. 6, 1832; son of the Rev. Zachariah Herndon and Malinda (Cox) Gordon. His great-grandfather was one of seven Gordon brothers who emigrated from Scotland to North Carolina and Virginia and were soldiers in the Revolutionary war. He matriculated at the University of Georgia in 1851, but was not graduated. He was admitted to the bar and practised in Atlanta, Ga., with his brother-in-law, Logan E. Bleckley, afterward chief-justice of Georgia. He was married in 1854 to Fanny, daughter of the Hon. Hugh Anderson Haralson of La Grange, Ga. He engaged with his father in mining coal in Georgia and Tennessee, joined the Confederate army as captain of volunteers in 1861, and was promoted major, lieutenant-colonel, colonel, brigadier-general, major-general and acting lieutenant-general, commanding a wing of Lee's army at the close of the war. At Sharpsburg in 1862 he was five times wounded, four rifle balls passing through his body. The fifth passed through his face and rendered him unconscious. He was carried from the field and was nursed back to life by his wife who accompanied the army to be near her husband during the four years of war?nursing in the hospitals of Richmond when the army was around that city. He commanded an infantry division at Gettysburg and led the attack, July 1, 1863, where in the midst of a charge he humanely succored Gen. Francis C. Barlow of New York and sent a message from the apparently dying soldier to his wife at Meade's headquarters. For Spottsylvania, where he repulsed Hancock's corps, May 12, 1864, he was promoted major-general and was commander of the 2d army corps of the Army of Northern Virginia as successor to Lieutenant-General Jackson. He held the last lines at Petersburg guarding the retreat from that city, and at Appomattox was assigned to the command of 4000 troops (half of Lee's army), with the intention of cutting his way through Grant's line. He made the last charge and was taking the Federal breastworks and capturing artillery widen the movement was annulled by the surrender of his chief. After the farewell to the army of Northern Virginia had been Spoken by General Lee, Gordon addressed the 2d corps and exhorted his men to "bear their trial bravely, to go home, keep the peace, obey the laws, rebuild the country and work for the weal and harmany of the republic." After this he settled in Atlanta Ga. He was a member of the Union national convention at Philadelphia in 1866: chairman of the Georgia delegation to the Democratic national convention of 1868; was, according to the claims of his party, elected governor of Georgia in 1867, but was counted out by reconstruction machinery; was a delegate-at-large to the Democratic national convention at Baltimore in 1872; U.S. senator, 1873-79; was re-elected in 1879, and in 1880 resigned to promote the building of the Georgia Pacific railroad. He was governor of Georgia, 1886-90; U.S. senator, 1891-97, and declined in 1897 a re-election to the senate, thereafter devoting his time to lecturing and literary work. In the U.S. senate his speeches on finance, civil service reform and in defence of the south were conservative in tone and exerted a powerful influence in allaying the strained conditions of affairs. In the Louisiana troubles of 1876 the Democrats of congress selected him to draft an address to the people of the south, in which he counselled patience, endurance and an appeal to a returning sense of justice to cure their present wrongs. In 1877 Governor Hampton empowered him to look after the interest of South Carolina and he secured the withdrawal of Federal troops from the state. In 1893 at the time of the Chicago strike, he made a speech in the U.S. senate in which he pledged the south to maintain law and order. He became well known in the lecture field and under his historic theme, "The Last Days of the Confederacy," he gave the story of the war a new color and corrected many false impressions that had served to keep at variance the people of the two sections for a whole generation.

From: Twentieth Century Biographical Dictionary of Notable Americans, Johnson, Rossiter, editor

History of Upson County Georgia

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