General Barlow and General Gordon Meet on Blocher’s Knoll

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The debunking of the Gordon-Barlow story had resulted from scholars researching Barlow’s wartime letters to his family — especially a July 7 missive to his mother, Almira Penniman Barlow — which only became available in 1942. Barlow’s own account of what happened to him on the battlefield and in Confederate captivity proved crucial to later interpretations of the events on Blocher’s Knoll and after. It provides the key piece of evidence in Hanna’s contention that the meeting did not take place.

In the July 7 letter, Barlow reported that after his wounding he lay on the ground, where he was discovered by one of Early’s staff officers, ‘Major Pitzera,’ actually Lieutenant Andrew L. Pitzer, who directed some Confederates to carry the seriously wounded Yankee officer off the field and into a woods. They left some water for him and then returned to the business of driving his division through Gettysburg. Somewhat later, prisoners from his own division fashioned a stretcher out of a blanket and transported their commander to a house on Joseph Bemer’s farm.

Barlow’s clothing was saturated with blood, and he was in great pain. A bed was found for him, and as night fell and the battle died down, three Confederate surgeons came to examine him. They anesthetized him with chloroform and probed the wound. When he awoke, the Southern doctors told the Yankee general that a Mini ball had passed through his body, cut the peritoneum and lodged in his pelvic cavity. They gave him little chance to live, administered some morphine and left. Barlow, the only Federal general captured that day, had become something of a celebrity prisoner, and several Confederate officers visited him that night. As was true of the other Rebels with whom he came into contact, Barlow pronounced them ‘very kind.’ Perhaps they knew Barlow by reputation and gave him the respect one warrior owes to another.

During the morning of the next day, the three Southern doctors returned with a captured Federal surgeon and conducted a joint reexamination. They concluded that Barlow’s intestines had been cut, he would therefore quickly develop peritonitis, and there was nothing to be done. Barlow was then transferred to Jane Smith’s house in Gettysburg near the almshouse. He stayed there during the remainder of the battle, taking advantage of his situation to talk freely with Confederate officers who came to see him. Gordon is not mentioned in his letter, but he did mention speaking with members of Ewell’s and Early’s staffs. The absence of any reference to Gordon in Barlow’s account led to the logical assumption that their encounter on Blocher’s Knoll was a fabrication, a ‘feel-good’ myth designed for postwar consumption.

But consigning the Barlow-Gordon meeting to the status of apocrypha leaves many questions unanswered. To begin with, one part of the famous legend was never in doubt. Barlow’s wife, Arabella, was indeed informed that he was wounded and in Confederate hands. Arabella Wharton Griffith Barlow was a remarkable woman, 10 years Frank’s senior, who served as a volunteer nurse until typhoid contracted at an Army hospital killed her in July 1864. She made her way into Gettysburg and was seen searching for her husband on the evening of July 2, and finally found him on July 4.

It is possible, of course, that someone other than Gordon sent word across the lines, but the actual situation fits the story. Additionally, pages are missing from the July 7 letter, around which revolves most of the doubt regarding the events on Blocher’s Knoll. Although it seems Barlow had finished describing Confederates he met on the battlefield or in captivity before the letter breaks off, it is simply impossible to know what else he wrote.

Moreover, the Barlow-Gordon encounter gains credence from the fact that the story was well established by 1879, 17 years before Barlow’s death. The former general must have been aware of it and asked about it as well. Everyone who ever had any contact with Frank Barlow, both those who liked him and those who did not, agreed that he was bluntly honest and candid in all his opinions — even when they worked against his better interests. The notion that he would have remained quiet about fables being circulated concerning his wartime experiences is not credible. He could have killed the story with one simple denunciation. He did not. Additionally, Barlow met Gordon on several occasions after the war, at least once at a conspicuous public ceremony.

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Tags: 19th Century, America's Civil War, American Civil War, Historical Conflicts

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