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Original URL: docsouth.unc.edu/fpn/gordon/gordon.html, pages xxi--xxviii
From the Memorial Edition 1904 of John B. Gordon's Reminiscences of the Civil War
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." ---Atlanta "News" of January 14, 1904
"Hats off! Gordon comes home to-day." ---From Atlanta "Constitution" of January 13, 1904
"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." ---Editorial in Atlanta "News" of January 13, 1904
"
In the cold gray dawn of the January morning a great throng overflowed the station, and filled the streets outside, as the train
rolled into Atlanta, bearing the body of General Gordon. The official escort awaiting the train was composed of the new
commander-in-chief of the Confederate Veterans Association, and other ex-Confederate officers, members and commanders of four
camps of Confederate Veterans, the Confederate Veterans on the Atlanta police force, mounted police, and State militia. Besides
these, thousands stood with heads bared, and bowed in reverence, as the casket was removed and borne to the hearse by the grizzled
heroes who had followed this leader in war, and learned of him the lessons of peace. As the pall-bearers moved toward the hearse,
an old veteran approached the casket, hurriedly, removed his overcoat, handed it to a by-stander, and jerking off his worn and
faded jacket, of Confederate gray, asked, in tremulous tones, "May I lay it on his coffin just one minute?" His request was
granted; and, as he lifted the jacket tenderly and slipped it again over his bent shoulders, he said between sobs:
"Now thousands couldn't buy it from me!"
The procession moved to the State Capitol, and there in the rotunda, on a catafalque covered with flowers, the casket was
placed. Around the great circular room, at intervals, drooped the flag of his beloved Confederacy, for which he had given the
first blood of his young manhood, and the flag of a reunited country, to which he had given the richest offerings of his mature
years. Palm branches from Florida, floral tributes from all over the South and
from the North, garlanded four tall pillars, and hung in fragrant masses on the casket, on the walls, and on stands about the
corridor. And thus "the first citizen of the South lay in state in Georgia's Capitol."1 (Atlanta "News," January 13, 1904)
Tens of thousands passed in double line
to look upon the face of a man "who was loved as seldom man was ever loved on earth."2 (Atlanta "Journal")
The Capitol doors were kept open at night that the workingmen might see his face, and it was long after midnight before the
special guard of veterans and militia was left alone with its precious charge.
On Thursday morning, at ten o'clock, memorial exercises were held in the Georgia Hall of Representatives. While addresses
were being made by men of distinction who had served with him in war and in peace, men, women, and children still passed, in
unbroken line, by the casket in the rotunda. Immediately following these exercises, religious services were held in the
Presbyterian church adjoining the Capitol. A way was opened through the throng, which packed the Capitol corridors and massed
in the square and streets outside; and the casket was borne across by his old comrades. At Mrs. Gordon's request the veterans
were given first place in the church after the family.
"The thing that made Gordon great--that which bound him close to men and made him dear to them-- was his mighty heart,
strong as the ramparts of the hills through which he led his columns, gentle and pure as the kind zephyrs of his own
Southland . . . . Honest search after the source of Gordon's superb power cannot fail to show that the fountain of his
strength was not merely in his right arm, nor in his keen and flashing blade, nor yet in his alertness of mind and vigor
of intellect, but in the meeting of these qualities with a pure spirit--these sterling virtues fused behind the crystal of
his soul, forming the true mirror of knighthood . . . . He was master of many because master of himself."1 (Editorial Atlanta "Journal," January 14, 1904)
From the rich treasury of such a nature the ministers of Christ drew their lessons over the bier of this "prince of Christian
chivalry."2 (Atlanta "News.")
During the hours of the funeral, public and private schools and places of business were closed. All flags hung at half-mast,
and in some cities remained so for thirty days. Seventeen guns were fired at intervals of half an hour during the day.
Throughout Georgia and the entire South, memorial services were held at this hour, and from morning till night bells tolled
out the grief of the people.
The staff of the Department of the Gulf, United States Army, the Atlanta Camp, G. A. R., the Sixth Regiment United States
infantry, stationed near Atlanta, asked for place in the line of the funeral procession. They wished to join with others of
the North in paying tribute to the man "who had done most to make them forget the animosities of war-- and whose course since
that time had marked him with the attributes of true greatness."3 ("Free Press," Detroit, Michigan, and other Northern papers.)
It was a "sweet and solemn pageant," that funeral procession, which moved to muffled drumbeats through the city streets, all
filled with a silent throng and hushed in reverent sorrow: veterans of the Blue and of the Gray; men of America's army to-day,
regulars and militia; corps of cadets from Southern military schools; patriotic organizations; drum corps and bugle corps; and
a host of private citizens: and when the hearse stopped at the lot selected by the Ladies' Confederate Memorial Association, the
end of the procession was still down in the city streets.
And now
"The mortal remains of General John B. Gordon--soldier and statesman--lie in Oakland Cemetery . . . . The muffled drum has
beat the funeral march, and grief has found voice in the piercing minor of the fifes. But from over the whole South to-day there
rises a strange music which blends in one large requiem--not the dirge of unavailing sorrow, but rather a paean of heroic triumph
reciting the valorous deeds of him whom the people mourn." 1 ---Atlanta "Journal," January 14, 1904.
And those who knew him and loved him best, whose lives are most enriched by the matchless loveliness of his life, are lifted up
in his death, and, in the midst of their grief, open their hearts to the countless thousands who mourn his loss, because "he had
kept the whiteness of his soul." "His name becomes the heritage of his people, and his fame the glory of a nation."2 ---Atlanta
"Constitution," January 14, 1904.
Edited by FRANCES GORDON SMITH.
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