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General Barlow and General Gordon Meet on Blocher's Knoll
On July 1, 1863, two generals, one badly wounded, allegedly met. The veracity of that encounter, now part of Civil War lore, has long been debated.
By Richard F. Welch In the midafternoon of July 1, 1863, with the Battle of Gettysburg well underway, Union Brigadier General Francis Channing Barlow surveyed the Confederate lines from his vantage point atop a rise called Blocher's Knoll. Only two Federal corps were then on the field northwest of the town of Gettysburg -- Maj. Gen. John Reynolds' I Corps on the Federal left and Major General Carl Schurz's XI Corps on the right, to which Barlow's brigade belonged. Schurz had taken command of the corps after Major General Oliver O. Howard assumed control of all Union troops upon Reynolds' death.
Schurz placed his 3rd Division under Brig. Gen. Alexander Schimmelfennig on the XI Corps' right flank and ordered his 1st Division under Barlow to form up on Schimmelfennig's left. Living up to his already well-established reputation for aggressiveness, "Frank" Barlow, a cleanshaven 28-year-old former lawyer, abandoned his assigned place in the XI Corps' line and moved his division forward to Blocher's Knoll, the only high ground not in Confederate hands.
Barlow's forward movement caused the 1st Division to lose contact with Schimmelfennig's men, and Schurz was forced to realign the 3rd Division to keep his line intact. Barlow's deployment would have made sense if he were preparing to attack or repel a brigade of Confederate Maj. Gen. Robert Rodes' Division, which was slightly to his left. By midafternoon, however, the semi-salient on the knoll had become highly vulnerable after Confederate troops from Maj. Gen. Jubal Early's Division of Lt. Gen. Richard Ewell's Second Corps arrived on the scene and made ready to attack. About 3 o'clock, Early's men, with Brig. Gen. John B. Gordon's Brigade in the van, rolled forward, hitting Barlow on both front and flank.
Barlow's first brigade, led by Brig. Gen. Leopold von Gilsa, a German-born officer whom Barlow loathed, broke under the onslaught and fell back among Brig. Gen. Adelbert Ames' brigade, throwing it into confusion as well. Barlow would later contend that his men were well positioned and ready for an attack, and should have held their lines. Possibly more resistance could have been offered, but a stouter defense most likely would have slowed, not stopped, the Confederate onslaught. In any event, the Confederates were more generous in their descriptions of the fight. Ewell remembered an "obstinate contest" before the 1st Division broke, and Early described the clash as short and hot.
Barlow, however, always persisted in arguing that "no fight at all was made" by his troops. His condemnation of his men was probably affected by what happened to him personally as Blocher's Knoll was overrun. He later described this in a letter home: "Finding that they [the division] were going I started to get ahead of them to try to rally them and form another line in the rear. Before I could turn my horse I was shot in the left side about half way between the arm pit and the head of the thigh bone. I dismounted and tried to walk off the field. Everybody was then running to the rear and the enemy were approaching rapidly. One man took hold of one shoulder and another the other side to help me. One of them was soon shot and fell. I then got a spent ball in my back which has made quite a bruise. Soon I got too faint to go any further and lay down. I lay in the midst of the fire some five minutes as the enemy were firing at our running men. I did not expect to get out alive. A ball went through my hat as I lay on the ground and another just grazed the forefinger of my right hand."
What happened to Francis Barlow in the next hour as his division fled and the Confederates came upon him became the subject of one of the great romantic legends of the Civil War. The story of his presumed experiences was cited as evidence of mutual respect and comradeship across the battle lines and was pressed into the cause of national reconciliation after Reconstruction. The first published version of the story, which probably originated with General Gordon, was in print in a Georgia newspaper by 1879. Over time, the account was elaborated with extended dialogue and detail. The basic story, as printed in 1879, went that as Barlow's division withdrew toward Culp's Hill, Gordon rode forward with his men and spied Barlow lying on the ground badly wounded. Gordon stopped, dismounted and gave Barlow a drink from his canteen.
The Confederate then inquired Barlow's name and, assuming he would not survive, asked if he had any final requests. "I shall probably live but a short time," the badly wounded Yankee replied. "Please take from my breast pocket the packet of my wife's letters and read one of them to me." Gordon complied, after which Barlow asked that he destroy the letters, as he did not want them to fall into anyone else's hands. Gordon tore up the missives and inquired if there was anything else he could do for his grievously stricken enemy. Barlow replied affirmatively. "My wife is behind our army," he explained. "Can you send a message through the lines?" "Certainly I will," Gordon replied, and directed that Barlow be carried off to the shade of a tree in the rear.
Later in the day Gordon succeeded in getting word to the Army of the Potomac that Barlow was badly wounded and asked that his wife be informed. Despite all professional prognostications, Barlow recovered from his wound and went on to play a major role in the ferocious fighting of Lt. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant's Overland campaign and the siege of Petersburg in 1864. The story then proceeds to a heartwarming conclusion. According to the popular account, Gordon simply assumed Barlow had died. Barlow later heard that a General Gordon had died and was certain this was his Gettysburg Samaritan, though it was actually Gordon's cousin, Brig. Gen. James B. Gordon, who was killed at Meadow Bridge, Va. The story of the Barlow-Gordon encounter ended with the unexpected meeting of the two former opponents at a dinner party hosted by Democratic Congressman Clarkson N. Potter in 1879. Upon being introduced to each other, Gordon said (here again, the exchange became more elaborate in later versions), "General Barlow, are you related to the officer of your name who was killed at Gettysburg?" "I am the man," Barlow replied. "Are you related to the Gordon who is supposed to have killed me?" "I am the man," Gordon said. The two officers expressed mutual surprise and fell into hearty conversation, beginning a friendship that would endure until Barlow's death in 1896.
The Gordon-Barlow story appealed to late Victorian sentimentality and the prevailing desire to heal the wounds of the war. It was frequently reprinted and became even more elaborate in some later accounts. A rendition with extended chivalric dialogue appeared in McClure's Magazine in the 1880s. That version was reprinted in Campfire and Battlefield, a popular history published in 1894. Yet another variant appeared in James A. Scrymser's 1915 book In Times of Peace and War, in which both Early and Gordon discover Barlow lying on the battlefield. In that account, Gordon asked whether something should be done for him, to which Early responded, "No, he is too far gone." On hearing this, Barlow raised himself up, somehow recognized the Confederate division commander, and shaking his fist vowed, "General Early I will live to lick you yet, damn you." This alleged exchange was repeated in the volume New York State issued in 1923 to commemorate the unveiling of a statue of Barlow on what had been renamed from Blocher's to Barlow's Knoll.
But it was the tender encounter between Gordon and Barlow that continued to evoke the most interest. The exchange was accepted and repeated, apparently without contradiction or challenge into the 1970s. James Montgomery's The Shaping of a Battle: Gettysburg (1959) recounted the battlefield meeting, including all the sentimental Victorian dialogue. Ezra Warner's Generals in Blue (1964) contains a brief mention of the story.
In 1985 William F. Hanna challenged the accepted truth about Barlow's fate at Gettysburg in his article "A Gettysburg Myth Exploded" that appeared in Civil War Times Illustrated. Hanna charged that no such meeting had occurred, and made a strong case to support his thesis. Since that time, it has become common to consign the Barlow-Gordon encounter to the category of fable.
The debunking of the Gordon-Barlow story had resulted from scholars researching Barlow's wartime letters to his family -- especially a July 7 missive to his mother, Almira Penniman Barlow -- which only became available in 1942. Barlow's own account of what happened to him on the battlefield and in Confederate captivity proved crucial to later interpretations of the events on Blocher's Knoll and after. It provides the key piece of evidence in Hanna's contention that the meeting did not take place.
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