Gordon took Traveller’s bridle and handed it to two soldiers to escort Lee to the rear. Gordon’s charge into what he later called “a fire from hell itself” pushed the Yankees out of the eastern side of the salient. Fighting raged into the next day, but the Confederates held on and established a new line. Gordon was promoted to major general.

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Two months later Gordon again displayed his brilliance as a leader, in the little-known but crucial Battle of Monocacy, which took place four miles south of Frederick, Md., on a blistering hot July 9, 1864. Gordon’s Brigade was part of Early’s corps, sent by Lee to rid the Shenandoah Valley of Union troops, and then cross into Maryland and threaten Washington, D.C. Early was about to do the latter when Union Maj. Gen. Lew Wallace forced him into battle at the Monocacy River, just 40 miles from the nation’s capital.

Early’s forces outnumbered Wallace’s troops about 14,000 to 6,400, but Early did not want to fight and kept many of his troops in reserve. But when the going got tough, Gordon led his division to a decisive but bloody victory. Following an ill-advised and disastrous dismounted cavalry charge by John McCausland, Gordon led three brigades of Georgia, Louisiana and Virginia infantry regiments into the teeth of two brigades of Brig. Gen. James Ricketts’ division of battle-hardened VI Corps troops.

The fighting, Gordon later said, “was desperate and at close quarters. To and fro the battle swayed across [a] little stream, the dead and wounded of both sides mingling their blood in its waters.” When the fighting concluded, he said, “a crimsoned current ran toward the river. Nearly one half of my men and large numbers of the Federals fell there.”

The battle ended when Gordon, aided by massed artillery, flanked the remnants of Ricketts’ line on the Georgetown Pike. As Confederate Maj. Gen. John C. Breckinridge observed, “Gordon, if you had never made a fight before, this ought to immortalize you!”

A month later, on August 25, 1864, Gordon received another serious wound, this time in a skirmish near Shepherdstown, W.Va. He suffered a head wound that bled extensively, though accounts differ on how the wound occurred. Early’s topographer, Jedediah Hotchkiss, wrote in his journal that Gordon’s wound was from a saber cut.

Three weeks later, as Union Maj. Gen. Phil Sheridan moved on Winchester, division commanders Gordon and Maj. Gen. Robert E. Rodes found themselves with 6,000 men facing Sheridan’s 30,000. As they conferred on what to do, Rodes was mortally wounded when a shell fragment struck him in the back of the head. Gordon took command of both divisions and ordered a charge that halted the Federal cavalrymen and pushed them back. Gordon’s men thought they had won the battle, but Sheridan re-formed his men and routed the Confederates, even as Fanny Gordon, caught up in the retreat, pled for them to make a stand.

On October 19 Gordon, commanding the Second Corps in Early’s army, struck Sheridan’s men, routing two-thirds of them at the Battle of Cedar Creek southwest of Middletown, Va. Gordon’s plan for a final assault to sweep the Union VI Corps from the field was overruled by Early, who said the Yankees were beaten. But Sheridan re-formed the men and pushed the Confederates from the field—a victory that spelled the end for Confederate campaigning in the Shenandoah Valley.

In December 1864, Gordon was ordered to rejoin the Army of Northern Virginia as commander of the bulk of the Second Corps while Early remained in the valley. Lee’s army faced a siege at Petersburg, Va., by Lt. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant and the Army of the Potomac—and after study and consultation, Lee ordered Gordon to find a spot to attack. Gordon chose Fort Stedman on the Union lines east of Petersburg.

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