My Favourite Confederate Officer

GORDON, George Tomlin Born in London on 8th August 1823. Son of the Rev. John Gordon, the vicar of Edwinstowe, Nottinghamshire, and Sarah Matthews. Educated at Westminster School & Jesus College, Cambridge. Married Harriet Harrison in 1847 at All Saints Church, Weston, Yorkshire. In 1851 he was a landed proprietor living at Cuckney Hall, Cuckney, Nottinghamshire. in 1860 he was appointed Treasurer of the colony of Vancouver Island.

This appointment was duly recorded in various official publications in England and, on 31st December 1860, one of these came to the attention of a member of the British Government, the Duke of Newcastle under Lyne. He wrote a hasty letter to the Vancouver authorities: “I am bound to tell you that this person resided for some years in my neighbourhood and was obliged to leave the country in consequence of his seduction of his friend’s wife under circumstances of peculiar aggravation.
It was then discovered that he had for years carried on a complete system of fraud and swindling. I fear he may be led into some serious fraud upon the Colonial Revenue and the sooner you can get rid of him the better for all concerned. You should at once, though without making any unnecessary stir, have an examination of the accounts.” Whether checks were carried out immediately on receipt of the Duke’s letter is unclear.

But, almost exactly a year later, Gordon was arrested for embezzlement. The arrest was reported in the Christmas Day edition of The British Colonist: “The feeling in town yesterday morning, wherever a Colonist containing an account of the defalcation was read, was one of unfeigned regret. Of all our public officers, none have been more uniformly kind and obliging to those having business at the offices than Capt. Gordon - a circumstance which rendered him very popular – but as a business man he was notoriously deficient, even in the simplest details. Added to his gentlemanly bearing, sympathy for his large and interesting family will exert a powerful influence in his favor.

Capt. Gordon’s friends, both here and in England, are numerous and influential…” But – in the time-honoured tradition of newspapers everywhere – the Colonist had changed its tune by the time of Gordon’s conviction at the end of January 1862: “For several moments [after the jury’s verdict] a deep silence prevailed throughout the court room. The prisoner seemed stunned by the verdict, and, pale as death, with his head bowed low on his breast, he stood motionless as a statue….as the wretched man, accompanied by the officers, passed out of Court on the way to his cell, several of the few – and they are very few – friends who had stood manfully by his side during the whole period of his incarceration and disgrace, gathered around, and grasping his hand, silently and tearfully bid [sic] him good-bye.

The scene was a most affecting one…” Gordon’s case ran to three separate trials, during which he was housed in the Debtors’ Prison. The resolution of this saga was recorded in The British Colonist of 19th May 1862: “Yesterday morning Captain G.T. Gordon, ex-Treasurer of this colony, who has been confined in the debtor’s prison ever since the rendition of the notable decision of Chief Justice Cameron upsetting the indictment against him for embezzlement, made his escape from the debtor’s prison by unlocking with a false key the gate between the barracks and the kitchen. The last seen of the Captain by any one about the jail was about seven o’clock in the morning, when he drank a cup of tea in the kitchen, and he is thought to have made his escape immediately thereafter…the Captain had all along been allowed a great deal of liberty, and was therefore not missed until about one o’clock in the afternoon.

Search was made yesterday by the authorities, but it is doubtful if he can be found, and very few will weep if he is not. The runaway was seen about eight o’clock yesterday morning taking long strides across the vacant lots near the corner of Douglas and Kane streets, en route to Beacon Hill, where he probably obtained a boat for the American side.” On 13th December 1862, he was commissioned Major of the 34th North Carolina Infantry. He was promoted Lt-Colonel on 6th May 1863. Shortly before Pickett’s Charge, one of Pickett’s staff officers overheard his general in conversation with Gordon: “Colonel Gordon, it developed, was a British officer Pickett had faced on San Juan Island…Gordon, sounding like a soldier who had heard of Balaklava, was saying, ‘Pickett, my men are not going up today.’ ‘But, Gordon, they must go up, you must make them go up,’ Pickett declared. ‘You know, Pickett,’ continued the colonel, ‘I will go as far with you as any other man, if only for old acquaintance sake, but my men have until lately been down at seashore, only under fire of heavy guns from ships, but for the last day or two they have lost heavily under infantry fire and are very sore, and they will not go up today.’ ” [There are a number of problems with this anecdote. Gordon had never been a British army officer, although he may have held militia rank in Canada.

The 34th North Carolina had not gone through the sort of experiences before Gettysburg which Gordon supposedly described. And the staff officer, Robert A. Bright, was subsequently unable to identify this British “Colonel Gordon”. But George Tomlin was the only British-born field officer with the A.N.V. who was named Gordon, and his confirmed presence in Vancouver makes a San Juan meeting with Pickett at least possible.] He was, in fact, wounded in the leg at Gettysburg on 3rd July, and again in the leg in June 1864.
 
In October 1864 he became Inspector General on the staff of General Whiting. He spent the months after the fall of Fort Fisher on Braxton Bragg’s staff, and was present at Bentonville.

In her “Foreigners In The Confederacy”, Ella Lonn described Gordon as “a big, soldierly-looking man with red whiskers, and with such beautiful manners that he was received as a constant visitor in many of the most refined Southern homes.
Despite his constant support of the corps which maintained a notorious gambling club near the Spottswood Hotel in Richmond, he was recognised as a real fighter.” Somewhat less impressed was W.W. Glenn, a Baltimore journalist of Confederate sympathies, who recorded in his diary for 25th June 1865 that “In New York last week I saw one pretty girl who would stick by Col. Gordon.

He had been repeatedly faithless to his wife, he had run away with his Major’s wife and been forced to sell out in England (of the Coldstreams I think), he had left his wife and six children to take care of themselves, he had committed forgery in Vancouver’s Island, been tried & convicted and lastly he had received in Baltimore $700 for Col.

Ransom to be handed him in Richmond and appropriated it himself. It was no use. He had fought and bled for the South. The lovely Sally would forgive him. As for the fact of his having condescended to obtain a commission in the Northern Army, in the beginning of the war, that she simply did not believe.” [The “Col. Ransom” referred to was in fact Glenn’s brother-in-law, Ambrose Ranson.] He died in New Orleans on 26th February 1866, he died.

He had evidently made a favourable impression on his new neighbours in the closing months of his life, since a local newspaper wrote that “How nobly he performed what he considered his duty thousands of his fellow citizens can testify.

It is but seldom that memories of the warlike events which occurred around Richmond are looked upon by his surviving comrades without a tribute being paid to his memory by those who had so many opportunities of admiring and respecting him for his gallantry as a soldier and his worth as a man.” [Lonn, Foreigners In The Confederacy, pp.175 & 464; Marks & Schatz, Between North & South: A Maryland Journalist Views The Civil War, 227 & 355; Tucker, Lee & Longstreet At Gettysburg, pp.105-106.]