Barlow had enlisted to fight, and McClellan gave him another chance at Antietam, where the Federal commander brought General Robert E. Lee to bay on September 17, 1862. Rather than concentrating his superior force against Lee, McClellan fed his men into battle piecemeal, offsetting his own numerical advantages. One of the deadliest sections of the blood-soaked battlefield was the Sunken Road, where Confederate regiments poured withering fire into advancing Union troops, cutting regiments to pieces.

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Around noon, it was Barlow’s turn to try to force the Confederates from their position. Commanding both the 61st and 64th New York, Barlow hit the Southerners at a bend in the road where two Confederate regiments met. Breaking the line at this point, Barlow’s men poured fire into the startled Rebels from both directions, and the entire enemy line gave way. Barlow sent 300 prisoners to the rear and then faced his men west to help fend off a Confederate counterattack. The attack was broken, but in the ensuing pursuit Barlow went down with a severe groin wound. For his conduct at Antietam, Barlow was promoted to brigadier general.

Barlow’s wound was so serious that he was forced to take leave while he recuperated. Not for the last time, his wife nursed hits back to health. Barlow missed the December 1862 debacle at Fredericksburg, and when he returned to duty he was given command of a brigade in Maj. Gen. Oliver O. Howard’s XI Corps. Barlow was unhappy with his new assignment and saw little action at the May 1863 Battle of Chancellorsville. Two months later, at Gettysburg, he had his closest brush with death, an encounter that provided the raw material for one of the masterpieces of Civil War apocrypha.

In the late 1890s, a story began to circulate that, after Barlow was grievously wounded on the first day of battle and left for dead, he was found and succored by Confederate Brig. Gen. John Gordon. According to this account, Gordon paused in the middle of directing an attack, conversed with Barlow, read Barlow” last letter from Arabella and sent word through the lines to inform her of Barlow’s condition. In the 1880s, Gordon and Barlow, who each thought the other had been killed in the war, supposedly met at a dinner party and became fast friends. This version of Barlow’s, experience at Gettysburg probably originated with Gordon, although the most elaborate accounts appeared in McClure’s Magazine and Campfire and Battlefield. The fable was part of a conscious process to heal the wounds and divisions of the war by emphasizing the common brotherhood of the contending soldiers. Although this was a laudable undertaking, the Barlow-Gordon meeting never actually happened, as Barlow himself revealed in a letter written to his mother on July 7, 1863, four days after the Battle of Gettysburg.

Although the reality of Barlow’s Gettysburg experience lacked the poignancy of the famous story, it was dramatic enough in itself. Barlow arrived on the field from Emmitsburg, Md., on July 1 and moved into position just west of town to support the I Corps, which was already engaged against Confederates converging from the west and north. Barlow found himself on the extreme right of the makeshift Federal line, alongside Brig. Gen. Alexander Schimmelfennig’s division. After the Southerners were reinforced by Maj. Gen. Jubal Early’s division, the Rebels struck the XI Corps from both front and flank, and the Federal line began to disintegrate.

Barlow sped his horse to the front in an attempt to rally his men, but before he could turn the animal he was hit by a bullet in the side. Barlow dismounted and tried to walk off the field in the midst of bolting Federal and pursuing Confederates. Two of his men took him by the shoulders and tried to help, but one was cut down, and Barlow was hit again in the back by a spent bullet. Unable to go farther, Barlow lay down not expecting to survive. A third bullet went through his hat, and his right forefinger was grazed by yet another round.

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