Gordon’s attack early on March 25, 1865, started well but within three hours Union reinforcements had contained Gordon’s breakthrough, which the exhausted Confederates lacked reserves to support. By 8 a.m. Gordon began to withdraw his men as a vicious Federal barrage of fire swept the no-man’s land between the lines. Some 3,500 Confederates were captured, killed or wounded, including Gordon, who suffered a flesh wound in the leg.

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That all but marked the end for the Army of Northern Virginia. Six days later, Union forces turned Lee’s right flank at Five Forks and forced the Rebels out of their Petersburg defenses and into a retreat that ended with them bottled up west of the Appomattox River. Lee had no choice but to surrender to Grant, on April 9.

Gordon had the bittersweet honor of leading the Confederate troops in the surrender ceremonies at Appomattox Court House. As the defeated Rebels filed past their Federal counterparts, with Gordon riding at the head of the Second Corps, Union Brig. Gen. Joshua Chamberlain ordered his assembled soldiers to snap their muskets from “order arms” to “carry arms” in a show of respect. Gordon instantly wheeled his horse and touched it with a spur so that the horse’s head bowed, and Gordon touched his swordpoint to his toe in salute. He ordered his men to also shift to “carry arms” to return the gesture.

The men who served with him, enlisted and officers, also sang Gordon’s praises. “Gordon always had something pleasant to say to his men, and I will bear my testimony that he was the most gallant man I ever saw on a battlefield,” wrote John W. Worsham, a foot soldier with the 21st Virginia Infantry Regiment, who also had served under Lt. Gen. Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson. He wrote that Gordon “had a way of putting things to the men that was irresistible, and he showed the men, at all times, that he shrank from nothing in battle on account of himself.”

Gordon went back into private business in Georgia after the war. In 1868 he ran unsuccessfully as the Democratic candidate for governor. Despite that defeat, Gordon soon launched a successful political career.

He was elected in 1873 as a Democrat to the U.S. Senate, where he became a voice for reconciliation between the North and South. At the same time, he worked assiduously to remove Federal troops from the South and, wanting to maintain prominence for Southern whites, he became active in the budding Ku Klux Klan.

Gordon was re-elected to the Senate in 1879 and served until May 1880, when he resigned to go into private business once again. Gordon was elected governor of Georgia in 1886, served two terms, and returned to the U.S. Senate in 1891. He became the first president of the United Confederate Veterans in 1889.

John Brown Gordon died in Miami at age 71 on January 9, 1904, three months after his memoir, Reminiscences of the Civil War, was published. The general even received a tribute from President Theodore Roosevelt, who summed up what many felt by saying, “A more gallant, generous, and fearless gentleman and soldier has not been seen by our country.”

Journalist, historian and author Marc Leepson’s most recent book, Desperate Engagement: How a Little-Known Civil War Battle Saved Washington, D.C., and Changed American History, tells the story of the Battle of Monocacy and Jubal Early’s campaign to capture the Union capital.

For more information on Fanny Gordon, who shared the general’s life for 50 years and nursed his many wounds, see Shot by Cupid’s Bow in the September 2008 edition of America’s Civil War.

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