John Brown Gordon ((1832-02-06)February 6, 1832 – (1904-01-09)January 9, 1904) was an American politician, Confederate States Army general, attorney, slaveowner and planter.

"One of Robert E. Lee's most trusted generals" by the end of the Civil War according to historian Ed Bearss,[1]: 241  he strongly opposed Reconstruction era.

Assigned by General Lee to hold the vital sunken road, or "Bloody Lane", during the Battle of Sharpsburg, Gordon suffered new wounds.

Gordon continued to lead his men, despite the fact that the muscles and tendons in his arm were mangled and a small artery was severed.

[6]: 83 Impressed with Gordon's performance, Lee requested a promotion to brigadier general on November 1, 1862; however, this was not confirmed by the Confederate States Congress due to his being wounded.

Union militia under Col. Jacob G. Frick burned a mile-and-a-quarter-long covered wooden bridge to prevent Gordon from crossing the river, and the fire soon spread to parts of Wrightsville.

Thenceforward, until his untimely death in 1896, the friendship between us which was born amidst the thunders of Gettysburg was greatly cherished by both.Barlow returned to service in April 1865 and pursued Gordon and his troops during the Battle of High Bridge.

Gordon's success in turning back the massive Union assault in the Battle of Spotsylvania Court House (the Bloody Angle) prevented a Confederate rout.

[6] Confederate cartographer Jedediah Hotchkiss's official report of the incident stated, "Quite a lively skirmish ensued, in which Gordon was wounded in the head, but he gallantly dashed on, the blood streaming over him."

Gordon continued to lead a division in Early's Army of the Valley, fighting at Fisher's Hill and Cedar Creek, where he led an overnight flanking maneuver around the northern base of Massanutten Mountain, followed by an early morning assault that he had devised while previously surveying the Union position from Signal Knob.

[8] The assault nearly crushed the Federal line at the Belle Grove Plantation before a "fatal halt" turned the tide of battle and doomed Gordon's successes made earlier in the day.

At Appomattox Court House, Gordon led his men in the last charge of the Army of Northern Virginia, capturing the entrenchments and several pieces of artillery in his front just before the surrender.

Before us in proud humiliation stood the embodiment of manhood: men whom neither toils and sufferings, nor the fact of death, nor disaster, nor hopelessness could bend from their resolve; standing before us now, thin, worn, and famished, but erect, and with eyes looking level into ours, waking memories that bound us together as no other bond;—was not such manhood to be welcomed back into a Union so tested and assured?

Gordon at the head of the column, riding with heavy spirit and downcast face, catches the sound of shifting arms, looks up, and, taking the meaning, wheels superbly, making with himself and his horse one uplifted figure, with profound salutation as he drops the point of his sword to the boot toe; then facing to his own command, gives word for his successive brigades to pass us with the same position of the manual,—honor answering honor.

On our part not a sound of trumpet more, nor roll of drum; not a cheer, nor word nor whisper of vain-glorying, nor motion of man standing again at the order, but an awed stillness rather, and breath-holding, as if it were the passing of the dead!In his book Hymns of the Republic: The Story of the Final Year of the American Civil War, S. C. Gwynne states that this account is "one of the most cherished of the bogus Appomattox stories ... [but] ... there is no convincing evidence that it ever happened ... [N]one of the thirty thousand other people who saw the surrender noted any such event".

The rebel general apparently liked it, and it reflected well on him, as the time went by Gordon added his own liberal embellishments, including the suggestion that Lee himself had led the Army through town.

The two generals would clearly have preferred this distinctly Walter Scott-like sequence, described in countless books and memoirs, to the decidedly less romantic one that actually took place.

[7] As the government of the State of Georgia was being reconstituted for readmission to the Union, Gordon ran as the Democratic candidate for governor in 1868, but was defeated by Republican Rufus Bullock in a vote of 83,527 to 76,356.

In this sense, Gordon typified the upper levels of Southern society: he would do what had to be done to assure a white-controlled social order, but he hoped it could be accomplished without violence.

He opposed Republican efforts at Reconstruction and endorsed measures to preserve white-dominated society, including restrictions on freedmen and the use of violence against them.

Author Ralph Lowell Eckert concluded that Gordon was a member of the postwar Ku Klux Klan based on the former general's evasive answers during an 1871 hearing.

"[18]: 145–149  Gordon was thought to be the titular head of the Ku Klux Klan in Georgia,[19][note 2] but the organization was so secretive that his role was never proven conclusively.

In 1866, Gordon made substantial contributions in the form of money and materials to help build churches and schools for blacks in Brunswick, Georgia.

He advised them to: educate themselves and their children, to be industrious, save money and purchase houses, and thus make themselves respectable as property holders, and intelligent people.

With submission to the laws, industry and economy, with union among yourselves, and courtesy and confidence toward the whites, you will reach these ends, and constitute an important element in the community.

[18]: 130 Gordon hoped to ease the tensions between the blacks and whites in coastal Georgia, which had a long history of enslaved African-American workers on plantations.

[18]: 146  Historian Ralph Eckert notes that Gordon was willing to support blacks as long as they submitted to being in a subordinate social and political position.