Gordon told a friend later that as he lay on the battlefield, he imagined that half of his head had been shot away and that he was dead, but then he figured a dead man couldn’t move his limbs. Gordon biographer Ralph Lowell Eckert said that the colonel crawled about 100 yards to the rear, where the Confederates were forming a new line, and passed out again.

Subscribe Today

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

Gordon was carried on a litter to a barn where 6th Alabama Assistant Surgeon Thaddeus J. Weatherly dressed his wounds. When Gordon revived late that night he found himself lying on a pile of straw.

“My faithful surgeon, Dr. Weatherly, who was my devoted friend, was at my side, with his fingers on my pulse,” Gordon recalled. “As I revived, his face was so expressive of distress that I asked him: ‘What do you think of my case, Weatherly?’ He made a manly effort to say that he was hopeful. I knew better and said: ‘You are not honest with me. You think I am going to die; but I am going to get well.’ Long afterward, when the danger was past, he admitted that this assurance was his first and only basis of hope.”

Gordon’s spirited young wife Fanny, who followed her husband throughout his military campaigns, came to the barn as soon as she learned her husband had been wounded. When she reached him, she suppressed a scream as Gordon struggled to joke with her, saying he had been to an Irish wedding.

Fanny nursed her husband for seven months. She dressed his wounds, fed him brandy and beef tea because his jaw was wired shut, and provided long hours of bedside care and devotion. When Gordon contracted erysipelas, a serious bacterial infection, in his left arm, she kept the wounds painted with iodine. With Fanny’s care and his own strong will, Gordon miraculously recovered.

Gordon returned to duty in March 1863 and was given command of a brigade of six Georgia regiments in Lt. Gen. Jubal Early’s Division. After leading a successful assault on Marye’s Heights in Fredericksburg during the Battle of Chancellorsville in May, Gordon was promoted to brigadier general. As General Robert E. Lee restructured his army, Early’s Division was absorbed into Lt. Gen. Richard Ewell’s Second Corps and marched into the Shenandoah Valley as part of Lee’s second attempt to invade the North. At Gettysburg on July 1, 1863, Gordon’s brigade of 1,200 Georgians rolled up the Federal right flank north of the town and was driving the Yankees until ordered to halt by Early and Ewell, which Gordon later contended was a mistake that cost the Rebels the battle.

It would be 10 months before Gordon fought again, this time at the Battle of the Wilderness near the grounds of the Chancellorsville battlefield. As Ewell’s corps was being pushed west along the Orange Turnpike, Ewell rode up to Gordon and told him, “General Gordon, the fate of the day depends on you, sir.” Gordon wrote in his memoir that he replied, “These men will save it, sir,” although he wondered to himself how they would accomplish the feat.
Gordon’s men charged into the Union line, only to find themselves part of that line. Thinking quickly, Gordon ordered half his command to face right and the other half to face left and attack. The unprecedented move worked, the Federal advance was shattered, and Ewell’s men recaptured their lost ground. The next morning Gordon discovered that the Federal right flank was completely unprotected, but Early and Ewell were skeptical, mistakenly fearing that Yankee reinforcements had to be nearby. When Gordon finally received permission to attack late that afternoon, the assault succeeded until halted by darkness.

The Yankees pulled away and began a march to Spotsylvania Court House, where Gordon—now in command of Early’s former division while Early led the Third Corps—again proved to be a superb leader. Inside the Mule Shoe salient, he skillfully moved his brigades to counter attacks by Colonel Emory Upton on May 10 and Maj. Gen. Winfield Scott Hancock on May 12. As Gordon rode to find the exact location of the Federals, a Minié ball whizzed through his coat, grazing his back. When an aide asked Gordon whether he had been hit, Gordon scolded the young officer for slouching in his own saddle: “Sit up or you’ll be killed!”

As Gordon returned to his men, he found General Robert E. Lee riding his horse Traveller to the center of the line, preparing to join the charge. Gordon shouted, “General Lee, this is no place for you. These men behind you are Georgians and Virginians. They have never failed you and will not fail you here. Will you boys?” Gordon’s men yelled, “No, no, we’ll not fail him.”

Help HistoryNet by bookmarking to