Historica Wiki
Advertisement
George Gordon

George Washington Gordon (5 October 1836 – 9 August 1911) was a member of the US House of Representatives (D) from Tennessee's 10th district from 4 March 1907 to 9 August 1911, succeeding Malcolm R. Patterson and preceding Kenneth D. McKellar; he was also a Brigadier-General of the Confederate States Army during the American Civil War.

Biography[]

George Washington Gordon was born in Pulaski, Tennessee in 1836, and he graduated from the Western Military Institute in 1859 to become a railroad worker. Gordon enlisted in the Confederate States Army when the American Civil War broke out, and he became colonel of the 11th Tennessee in November 1862 before being promoted to Brigadier-General in August 1864. He was wounded and captured at Franklin in late 1864, and he became a lawyer after the war's end. In 1866, he was one of the founders of the Ku Klux Klan, a group of Confederate terrorists that devoted itself towards murdering African-Americans and white Republican Party supporters. Gordon later served as an Indian agent in Arizona and Nevada from 1885 to 1889, and he was superintendent of Memphis city schools from 1889 to 1907, when he was elected to the US House of Representatives from the 10th congressional district as a conservative Democratic Party member. He died in office in 1911.

Advertisement