Subscribe Today

• Did you enjoy our article?
• Read more in America's Civil War magazine
• Subscribe online and save nearly 40%!!!
 

From First Manassas to Appomattox, Confederate officer John B. Gordon survived wounds and illnesses. Sometimes you just can’t keep a good man down.

John Brown Gordon lay face down in the dust and smoke swirling along a sunken farm road in Maryland. It was midafternoon on September 17, 1862. Only moments before, the tall, slender colonel had used his booming voice to rally his 6th Alabama Infantry in their defense of the Sunken Road at the Battle of Sharpsburg, despite being slowed by two gunshot wounds to his right leg and one each in his left arm and left shoulder. As his men held the road that would later be re-christened Bloody Lane, a Yankee bullet had slammed into Gordon’s face, knocking him senseless and pitching him face-down into his hat.

To this point the 32-year-old rising star of the Confederacy had been an inspiring leader with a seemingly charmed life. He had entered the war as captain of a group of mountain men from northwest Georgia, southwest Tennessee and northeast Alabama. The group, known as the Raccoon Roughs because of their coonskin caps, had marched from Georgia to Mont­gomery, Ala., to join the 6th Alabama. Although Gordon lacked any formal military training, his natural command presence and quick-thinking coolness under fire at the First Battle of Manassas had quickly earned him respect and the eventual promotion to colonel in April 1862.

Even though he was only a colonel, Gordon assumed command of his brigade off-and-on during the fighting on the Virginia Peninsula. He had learned how to lead men into battle at Seven Pines, riding ramrod straight ahead of his men, bullets piercing his clothes but not his body; at Malvern Hill, where a bursting artillery shell blinded him temporarily; and at South Mountain, where his regiment alone remained intact during a fighting retreat from overwhelming Union forces.

At Sharpsburg, two brigades under Brig. Gens. Robert E. Rodes and G.B. Anderson held the center of the Rebel line along the Sunken Road. Gordon’s 6th Alabama Regiment, part of Rodes’ Brigade, held the ground closest to the Yankees, who were advancing southwest toward the road. Gordon ordered his men to wait until the Yankees were within 30 paces. Then he hollered, “Fire!”

“My rifles flamed and roared in the Federals’ faces like a blinding blaze of lightning accompanied by the quick and deadly thunderbolt,” Gordon wrote in his memoir. “The effect was appalling.” Three more times the Yankees charged and three more times a Confederate volley stopped them. Now the Union soldiers lay down and opened fire. But Gordon’s men, who had seen so many fall at their commander’s side, felt secure with their leader and his seeming
invulnerability.

“My extraordinary escapes from wounds in all the previous battles had made a deep impression upon my comrades as well as upon my own mind,” Gordon wrote. “If I had allowed these expressions of my men to have any effect upon my mind, the impression was quickly dissipated when the Sharpsburg storm came and the whizzing Miniés, one after another, began to pierce my body.”

A ball struck Gordon in the leg, passing through his right calf. A second ball hit him in the same leg. An hour later another ball tore through his left arm, tearing tendons and muscles. A fourth struck his shoulder. Weak from loss of blood, Gordon struggled to lead his men. Seeing the right of his line in jeopardy from enfilading fire, he started to walk there but was struck by a fifth ball that slammed through his left cheek and shattered his jaw. Gordon fell face down into his hat. He noted later that he might have drowned in his own blood had not a “thoughtful Yankee” earlier given the hat a bullet hole that allowed the blood to drain out.

Help HistoryNet by bookmarking to