Additionally, the dramatic device of the two generals supposedly believing each other dead, and each being surprised by the other's resurrection at Potter's dinner, is hard to credit. Both generals were hotly engaged in the 1864-65 campaigns. It is difficult to believe that army reports, newspaper accounts and prisoner interrogations did not reveal the continued existence of each general to the other. The putative happy surprise at Potter's party is even more difficult to accept when it is remembered that on at least two occasions — the Mule Shoe at Spotsylvania and the fighting from High Bridge to Farmville during General Robert E. Lee's retreat from Appomattox — the two generals' troops were battling each other head on. Furthermore, both men had achieved considerable prominence in politics by the mid-1870s, and as a leading southern Democrat, Gordon would have been well aware of Barlow's apostasy in Florida.

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Unfortunately, Francis Barlow never made any public comment about his connection with Gordon at Gettysburg. In the absence of any surviving statement by Barlow, there will always be an element of uncertainty regarding the events on Barlow's Knoll. From what is known, or can be deduced, the most likely scenario is that Gordon and Barlow had a shared experience during the fighting on July 1, 1863. Gordon paused and spoke to the badly wounded enemy general on the battlefield and probably directed that he be taken off the battlefield and out of danger. He also likely played a role in getting word of Barlow's wounding to his wife.

On the other hand, the story took on a life of its own. This was largely due to Gordon, who made the meeting at Barlow's Knoll a key part of his popular speech 'The Last Days of the Confederacy,' which he gave on numerous occasions. He also included a somewhat shortened account in his 1903 memoirs. In the swirl of battle, with one man apparently mortally wounded and the other trying to press an attack, it is unlikely that the two men engaged in the lengthy, genteel conversation that Gordon later related. Barlow may have accepted such exaggerations as insignificant annoyances to be borne in the cause of national reconciliation. Silence in the face of complete falsehoods involving his name and reputation, however, would have been alien to his character.

This article was written by Richard F. Welch and originally appeared in the March 2004 issue of America's Civil War.

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