General John Gordon at Spotsylvania Court House: Account of the Battle from His Memoirs

by John B. Gordon, Charles River Editors

John Brown Gordon (1832-1904) was one of the South’s biggest firebrands, and he fought like it, displaying personal courage and toughness unmatched by most of the South’s fighters. The result was multiple wounds at places like the Seven Days Battles, and most notably at Antietam, where he was hit 4 times and continued to fight until a bullet slammed him in the face, passing through his cheek and out his jaw. Gordon would have likely drowned in his own blood if it had not drained out through a bullet hole in his cap. Lee described Gordon to Jefferson Davis as "characterized by splendid audacity.”

The same qualities that made Gordon a ferocious leader throughout the war also made him an ardent opponent of the Reconstruction and a feisty writer. Gordon had been in the thick of almost every famous battle in the Eastern theater, making him a great source. Gordon’s memoirs, Rminiscences of the Civil War, also tell soldierly anecdotes, the most famous of them being the way in which he aided Union division commander Barlow during Day 1 at Gettysburg.

Gordon’s memoirs, published near the end of his life almost 40 years after the war, also demonstrate the mystique of the Lost Cause, of which Gordon was one of its strongest proponents. His memoirs reflect that, leading historians to compare him to General Jubal Early. Like most memoirs, Gordon’s was self-serving, and historians dispute some of his claims (such as being promoted to Lieutenant General, the highest military title in the Confederate armies). Nevertheless, Reminiscences is a spellbinding account of the Civil War told by one of its toughest fighters.

This account of Gordon at Spotsylvania Court House, taken from his memoirs, discusses the Battle of Spotsylvania Court House, one of the bloodiest battles of the Overland Campaign, with hand to hand combat raging at a salient point in the Confederate lines known as “The Angle.” It is specially formatted with a Table of Contents and images of Gordon and the battle.

Nook

First published August 18, 2011

About the author

John B. Gordon was a Confederate officer in the American Civil War. He was born in Upson County, Georgia, on his father's plantation, and attended the University of Georgia, proving himself a distinguished student. He passed the bar examination and practiced law until the outbreak of the war, at which point he was elected captain of a company of mountaineers. He quickly rose to brigadier general, and distinguished himself during a series of campaigns. Badly wounded at the Battle of Antietam, he spend months recovering and rejoined the war as a brigade commander under Jubal A. Early. Through the latter parts of the war, he began to rise to even more dramatic prominence, serving a crucial role as more and more of Lee's senior commanders were killed, injured, or became unreliable. After the end of the war, he was an extreme opponent of reconstruction and is generally acknowledged to have been the titular head of the Ku Klux Klan. Gordon served as the first Commander-in-Chief of the United Confederate Veterans and authored several memoirs, dying in Miami, Florida in 1904.