Francis & Arabella Barlow, John & Fanny Gordon: Love and War

By John Fazio

Presentation to CCWRT on 15 April 2010, Summarized by Mike Rhein

Photography by Shane Gamble

©Cincinnati CWRT, 2010

History is replete with human juxtapositions.

One of the more poignant coincidences in our American Civil War history, in particular, juxtaposed on a little knoll north of Gettysburg, Pennsylvania on July 1, 1863 when Confederate General John B. Gordon (right) stopped to tend to a severely wounded Union general, Francis C. Barlow (left), during a furious rebel assault sweeping the Union forces from the field.

This confluence of two generals, leading parallel lives, was the point of focus from which our April speaker, John Fazio of the Cleveland Civil War Round Table, developed his subject. Mr. Fazio, an attorney for 44 years and now retired, also delved into the parallel lives of the generals’ wives, Arabella Griffith Barlow and Rebecca (Fanny) Gordon. He noted that both Generals Barlow and Brown were born in the early 1830’s; both practiced law; both started the Civil War at low rank, private and captain, respectively, and rose to generalships due to such qualities as great leadership and courage in battle, and both several times sustained wounds. Both would hold political positions after the war. Another key point of similarity between the two men was that they had wives who stayed by their side in camp through the war.

The two women nursed their husbands back to health for many months from battle wounds. Arabella, married to Francis Barlow in 1861 and joining the U.S. Sanitary Commission in 1862, cared for Barlow (having suffered two wounds at the Battle of Antietam in Maryland, Sept. 17, 1862) for seven months, according to Mr. Fazio. Rebecca (Fanny) Gordon nursed her husband back to good health after he sustained five wounds also at Antietam.

The speaker said that both men would exhibit superb leadership throughout the war, Barlow and Gordon rising to major generalships. These two leaders would, not knowing at the time, according to Mr. Fazio, confront each other again at the Battle of Spotsylvania Court House, Virginia, May, 1864. General Barlow, in General Winfield Hancock’s II Corps, helped lead a successful assault on the “Mule Shoe” salient portion of General R.E. Lee’s line. General Gordon led a counterattack to help close the breach in the salient, in addition to dramatically urging Lee in front of his men not to personally lead the attack.

Mr. Fazio related that Barlow would be given a furlough during the Petersburg campaign in 1864. His devoted Arabella had succumbed to typhoid fever on June 27 of that year. He would return for the Appomattox campaign in March, 1865, participating in the Battle of Sayler’s Creek. Gordon would be present at the Appomattox Court House surrender proceedings April 12, 1865.

Oh, back to that fateful day at the knoll south of the Blocher farm along the Carlisle Road north of Gettysburg in 1863. Gordon, after giving water to Barlow and removing him to nearby shade from the blazing heat, asked him who he was. Barlow gave his name, then asking Gordon to read one of Arabella’s letters to him and then requested him to tear up all of his wife’s letters there on the knoll, so that no one else could read them. Gordon acceded to this request and rode away, convinced that Barlow would be dead soon. He sent a courier with a flag of truce to inform Arabella that she could come through the Confederate line to retrieve her husband, according to Mr. Fazio. Barlow, attended to with constant care by Arabella, would return in time for the 1864 Wilderness campaign in Virginia.

Mr. Fazio described a chance meeting (one of those juxtapositions again!) in 1879 between Barlow and Gordon at a dinner party given by a New York Congressional Representative, Clarkston Potter. They sat across from each other at the table, looking quizzedly at one another until Barlow asked Gordon if he was the one that stopped to look after him at Gettysburg. Replying in the affirmative, Gordon asked if he was the same Barlow. The former Union general said yes. This serendipitous encounter would result in a friendship between the two former combatants, lasting until Barlow’s death in 1896. They would meet again at Gettysburg in 1888, Mr. Fazio said. Gordon lived until 1904; his faithful Fanny died in 1931. Gordon, who served as Georgia’s governor and U.S. senator after the war, in his speeches in later years would refer frequently to that fateful meeting with Barlow at Gettysburg and the subsequent coincidental dinner meeting in 1879.

Two life-streams converging and diverging time and again: Barlow and Gordon. Two wives displaying incredible devotion to their husbands, without which they might not have lived: Arabella and Fanny. Courage, duty, love and devotion: attributes not only at a military level but also a personal one. The generals and their wives: the aforementioned attributes reflecting not only themselves but the nation’s as well in the time of its wounds on and off the battlefield. Mr. Fazio’s fine presentation with its unique angle on the human juxtapositions in the War Between the States delineated the above qualities well.