A Tribute to General John B. Gordon

[dawna]

In his private life , John B. Gordon was pure and spotless, and an example to every American citizen. His devotion to his wife and family was beautiful in the extreme. In early life he had married Miss Fanny Haralson, daughter of Hon. Hugh Anderson Haralson, who represented Georgia in Congress for many years, and her devotion to him equalled the great love he bore her. She was ever near him through-out the war, and, but for her tender and wifely nursing when supposed to be fatally wounded at Sharpsburg, he could never have recovered. Her war experience would make a beautiful romance to go down with that of her departed husband. He never failed to try and make her the partner of his triumphs and popularity. At many of the reunions the old veterans accorded her as great an ovation as they gave their Commander.

No event since the great demonstration in New Orleans when Jefferson Davis died has brought out more strikingly the love of the Southern people for any one man than was shown when General Gordon was laid away in the beautiful cemetery in Atlanta, Georgia (January 14, 1904).ordon was laid away in the beautiful cemetery in Atlanta, Georgia (January 14, 1904). Upwards of seventy-five thousand people viewed and took part in the ceremonies.

Governors and distinguished citizens from almost every Southern State were present; and it was especially touching to witness the exhibition of love and affection of surviving Confederate soldiers, who attended in great numbers to show their esteem for the beloved dead. The people of the North also expressed sympathy, and the universal grief was reflected in telegrams from the President of the United States, the Secretary of War, the General of the army, in resolutions of State Legislatures in session, and in memorial meetings in many localities.

He was a devout and humble Christian gentleman. I know of no man more beloved at the South, and he was probably the most popular Southern man among the people of the North.

STEPHEN D. LEE,

Commander-in-Chief United Confederate Veterans.

MEMORIAL SKETCH OF THE LAST HOURS,
DEATH, AND FUNERAL OF GENERAL
JOHN B. GORDON



ON Wednesday morning, January 6, 1904, General Gordon was stricken with his last illness. Less than three weeks before, he had come to his winter home on Biscayne Bay, in Florida, where the sunlight and balmy air, always a delight to him, had seemed to revive him and stir his enthusiasm to a degree unusual even in one of his energetic and joyous temperament.



Those great qualities which set him high among men illumined with peculiar lustre these last weeks, making them an epitome of his whole life. Unconquerable energy, undying enthusiasm--above all, unselfish love--these were the traits which had borne him through the battles of war and the battles of peace, and through years of peerless civic service; these the traits which uplifted the work of his stalwart years and bore his spirit indomitable through years of physical frailty, and which at the very last shone through the mists of his dying hours with the glowing beauty of a setting sun. Only the day before his illness, he was tramping over the fields and through the orchards with his grandson, planning with the delight of a boy. "My son, this shall be a paradise for your grandmother and all of us some day."

Before noon on Wednesday he was unconscious, and it seemed he would sink out of sight without a sign; but in forty-eight hours he rallied. On Saturday morning he looked out on the sunlit bay and at the great palms waving against a blue sky, and said in low and broken tones: "It seems a poor use of God's beautiful gifts to us to be ill on a day like this!" From then until the end he was conscious enough to be constantly solicitous of the comfort of those about him, and to give during every fleeting hour some tender thought to that one who had been the comrade of his soul for nearly fifty years--"his helpmeet in the loftiest sense, his comforter, his counsellor, his friend";1 and as his beautiful spirit was poised for its glorious flight, he gave to her the last look and smile and touch of recognition.



At five minutes past ten o'clock on Saturday night, January 9, he passed into another life, as peacefully as a little child falls asleep. Within an hour the message had sped over the wires to the whole country; and the crowds around the bulletin boards in many Southern cities turned silently, and with tear-dimmed eyes scattered to their homes. Before midnight newsboys were crying the sad news up and down the residence streets; and on Sunday morning the heart of the whole South seemed to go out in one great throb of pain and sympathy. From every quarter of the country, as fast as the wires could carry them, came messages of sympathy from those who loved the man, and from those who mourned the nation's loss.On Sunday evening, at the request of the people of Miami, Florida, the body was borne, with military escort, to the Presbyterian church in that little city on the bay, to lie there in state until the funeral train should leave for Atlanta. A detachment of Florida troops accompanied the remains to Atlanta, and at the State line this guard of honor was augmented by members of the staff of Georgia's governor. At every station beautiful flowers were brought to the funeral car, and, when time allowed, old Confederate veterans, with tears streaming down their rugged cheeks, filed by to look for the last time on the face of their beloved leader.

"Hats off! Gordon comes home to-day."




"He comes--not as he came, one sunny day in spring nearly twoscore years ago, wearing the crested cypress of defeat as gravely proud as some successful Caesar might wear the conqueror's coronal of bays; not as he came when he laid aside the cares of statesmanship, and loftily enshrined in love and gratitude for those victories of peace no less renowned than war, voluntarily retire from the highest parliament of the world; not as he came for so many successive years from the annual camp-fires where the broken battalions met to exchange their stirring stories of the valor of other days, and, above all, to sit once more under the magic spell of his inspiring tongue. He has come home as, in the course of nature, he needs must come at last, covered with the sable trappings of grief, heralded by the slow monody of muffled drums, followed by the measured march of a people dissolved in the unspeakable bitterness of tears." 2


1 From Atlanta "Constitution" of January 13, 1904.
2 Editorial in Atlanta "News" of January 13, 1904.

"We have too many high-sounding words, and too few actions that correspond with them." ~Abigail Adams~

[larry_cockerham]

This fellow was also called before Congress along with Nathan Forrest concerning the early formation of the klan.