After graduating from Yale University, William Gordon joined the cotton brokerage firm of Reed and Tison in Savannah. He served as an officer in the Confederate army during the Civil War. Girl Scouts of the USA-JGLB
The Gordons were a serious family, relatives recalled, until Willie brought home his lively, quick-tongued Chicago bride. Some even said that things "never were the same in Savannah after Nellie Kinzie Gordon came." This wasn't surprising—in Chicago, Nellie had been the star within her social scene.
In 1818, Savannah's mayor, James Moore Wayne, purchased two lots at the corner of Bull and South Broad Streets and built an imposing English Regency—style home on the property. Daisy's grandparents purchased the home in 1831. Girl Scouts of the USA-JGLB
Nellie could speak several languages and dazzled everyone with her charm and conversational abilities. Her sharp wit and unexpected remarks added to her appeal. She rode horseback, played the piano, sang, painted pictures, and had boundless energy. Of course, she had been taught all the social skills that daughters from wealthy families were expected to have. But Nellie's behavior wasn't always proper. She cursed from time to time and was described as a "charming mischief-maker."
By the time they had been married three years, Nellie and Willie had two daughters. Eleanor, also called Nell, arrived on September 27, 1858. Juliette Magill Kinzie Gordon was born on Halloween, October 31, 1860, and was named in honor of her Grandmother Kinzie. When she was a baby, an uncle exclaimed, "I bet she's going to be a 'Daisy,'" and the nickname stuck. It soon became clear that Daisy shared many of her mother's personality traits.
The week of Daisy's birth, Abraham Lincoln was elected president of the United States. Lincoln was from Illinois and believed that slavery was morally wrong, and the friction between the North and South had intensified as he campaigned for office. After he was elected, most Southerners did not feel that compromise between the two regions was even possible.
Eleven Southern states, including Georgia, separated from the United States and formed the Confederate States of America. Jefferson Davis, a friend of Willie Gordon's, was elected the first president of the Confederacy. On April 12, 1861, when Daisy was about six months old, shots were fired on Fort Sumter, a Federal (Union) military post, and the war between the North and the South began.
Back in Chicago, Nellie's father and three of her brothers, John Jr., George, and Arthur, heeded President Lincoln's call for soldiers and signed up to support the Union. Meanwhile, Willie Gordon, a proud Southerner, was already enlisted in the Georgia Hussars, a volunteer cavalry militia unit. When it became clear that the war was going to last more than just a few weeks, the Hussars reported for duty in the Confederate army, and Willie was made a second lieutenant. His brother, male cousins, and boyhood friends also joined the Confederate forces. Willie was ordered to Virginia in September 1861 and attached to General J. E. B. Stuart's First Virginia Cavalry regiment of four to five thousand men.
Years of strife between the North and the South erupted in civil war when Confederate artillery bombarded Fort Sumter in Charleston Harbor, South Carolina. Union forces occupying the fort surrendered thirty-four hours later, and the Confederate flag was raised. National Archives
It was a tumultuous and tragic time for the country, as well as for the Kinzie and Gordon families. Nellie Gordon straddled two very different worlds. The Kinzies were Yankees; her new Southern relatives, including her beloved husband, were all Rebels. The Civil War, and its aftermath, would affect every individual in the United States, including little Daisy Gordon.
CHAPTER TWO
The Civil War
NELLIE GORDON stayed with her young daughters in Savannah during the early years of the Civil War. She knew that many residents distrusted her because of her Northern origins and because her father and her brothers were Union soldiers. Some even whispered behind her back that she might be a spy.
Most of the time, Nellie took it in stride. She had other worries, along with everyone else. Because most manufacturing was done in the North, many products, like textiles, were impossible to buy. Confederate paper money became nearly valueless.
Food was scarce too, and as the war progressed, Daisy and her older sister, Nell, grew pale and thin. They only knew about the war in a vague way. It was something really bad, but they were too young to truly understand what was happening in their little world or to the rest of the country.
Nell, who was two years older than Daisy, recalled that Papa and his brother, Uncle George, came home infrequently. Papa would slip into the garden in his tattered gray Confederate uniform and surprise his daughters. He allowed them to help their mother with the dressing of his flesh wounds. Daisy and Nell had no idea at the time that it was not just a game.
Then Mamma's brother, their Uncle John, was killed in battle in 1862. His death devastated the entire Kinzie family, for John was just twenty-three and his wife was expecting their first child. Shortly after John's death, Nellie's two other surviving brothers, George and Arthur, were taken prisoner.
The earliest known photograph of Daisy, taken when she was four or five years old. Girl Scouts of the USA-JGLB
While Willie was away with the Confederate troops, Nellie and Grandma Gordon ran the household as best they could, worrying as news of each battle, big or small, reached Savannah. No one was sure exactly where their loved ones might be fighting. Days or weeks could pass before they heard that Willie was still alive, and he was often slightly wounded. Meanwhile, the grim news about other sons and husbands who had been hurt or had died in battle echoed all around them. And of course Nellie also worried about her friends and family who were fighting for the North. She was greatly relieved when she learned that her brothers had been released.
On January 1, 1863, as the country began its third year of civil war, President Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation, which declared that anyone held as a slave would be free. Although many slaves in the South remained in bondage until the war was over, the proclamation allowed black men to join the Union army or navy. By the end of the war, some 200,000 soldiers and sailors of African descent had fought for the Union. And the Emancipation Proclamation changed the character of the war as federal troops fought even harder to secure a Union victory and freedom for all.
The following month, Willie Gordon was promoted to captain in the Confederate army and was assigned to the staff of General Hugh Mercer, who commanded the District of Georgia.
This map depicts the states circa 1862 during the War of the Rebellion, now commonly called the Civil War. The shaded areas represent the free and border states of the Union. Library of Congress
During that summer, the Confederate general Robert E. Lee ordered his Army of Northern Virginia to cross into southern Pennsylvania at Gettysburg, where they faced the Union's Army of the Potomac. Over fifty thousand men died at Gettysburg during the first three days of July, and Lee's soldiers retreated to Virginia. It was the bloodiest battle of the war.
A second military engagement, which had started on May 18, 1863, unfolded at Vicksburg, Mississippi, along the Mississippi River between Memphis and New Orleans. The Union general Ulysses S. Grant's forces bombarded Vicksburg from the south and east. The fighting lasted six weeks before the Confederate troops, under the leadership of General John Pemberton, surrendered to Grant on July 4, the day after the Battle of Gettysburg ended. It was a dark time for the Confederacy. They had lost two major battles, and the Union had gained control of the Mississippi River.
That August, Mamma had a third child, Sarah Alice. Since she shared a first name with her grandmother, Sarah Gordon, her parents called her Alice. Daisy and Nell called her Skinny. They often snuggled in bed with Mamma and their new sister, and for a brief time, they forgot about the Rebels and the scary-sounding Yankees. And they forgot that they were just as skinny as Alice.
In 1864, Yankee troops started to sweep across Georgia. By midsummer, General William Tecumseh Sherman and his men were fighting in the sta
te's capital, Atlanta. Confederate troops were forced to pull back and flee, and the city fell to the Union. As Sherman's men marched on toward the sea and Savannah, they ate all the available food and cut off supplies. Daisy's family, along with the rest of Georgia's residents, was even hungrier than before.
Everyone who worked for the Gordons pitched in to help. They bartered honey for a few precious eggs so that the girls could have enough protein to eat. They buried silver and other family valuables all over the property, knowing that if the Union soldiers came to the Gordon home, they might take anything of value. The grand mahogany furniture was too large to hide, so the family had to hope that the Yankees would not chop it up for firewood. The idea that the approaching army might tramp about the house and garden at any moment must have terrified Daisy and Nell.
The girls may even have heard the sounds of booming guns growing louder as the Northern army pushed closer and closer. Eventually, General Sherman's troops surrounded Savannah. About 250 miles away, Atlanta was still burning. On December 21, 1864, before a single shot was fired inside the city, the mayor of Savannah surrendered. Daisy was four years old.
Long after she grew up, Daisy still vividly remembered the day when General Sherman's army of blue-coated soldiers paraded through the city. The shutters and blinds were closed in the house. Daisy wrote, "I can even now feel the thrill and hear the tramp of the tired troops. My colored nurse waked me from a sound sleep, wrapped me in the blanket of my crib bed, [and] rushed with me to the balcony.... I saw for the first time real live Yankees, thousands and thousands of them!" During the procession, a military marching band played a song called "When This Cruel War Is Over."
Citizens flee as Sherman's army marches into Savannah. Georgia Historical Society
General Sherman's December 1864 telegram to President Lincoln about capturing Savannah, and the first page of Lincoln's response. Library of Congress
That week, General Sherman called on Daisy's mother. They had known each other before Nellie Gordon's marriage, and he brought her letters from her family in Chicago and asked if he could help in any way. Sherman was accompanied by a one-armed officer, General Howard, who fascinated Daisy. She wanted to know what had happened. The officer, who missed his own children, set Daisy on his knee and explained that his arm had been shot off by a Rebel's rifle.
"I suppose my father did it," Daisy announced. "He shot lots of Yankees."
Daisy's horrified mother hurried her out of the room.
That night, someone dumped garbage outside the Gordon house to protest that Nellie Gordon had allowed Sherman, the most reviled man in all the South, to step inside her home.
Nonetheless, both generals visited again, bringing candy. Daisy's mother wrote to a friend, "They came to my house frequently and made a great pet of [Daisy], roaring at her comments about Yankees."
Within weeks, General Sherman, following standard wartime procedure, ordered all women who were married to Confederate officers to leave Savannah with their children. He advised Nellie to go to Chicago, and he helped her make arrangements. But Nellie refused to leave without seeing her husband. With Sherman's help, she was able to cross battle lines and meet with Willie one last time in South Carolina. Then, in early 1865, Daisy, Nell, Alice, and their mother took a ship from Hilton Head, South Carolina, to New York City, where they boarded a passenger train for Chicago.
The cars were packed. There wasn't enough room to lie down and sleep, so Daisy and her sisters leaned against their mother for hours. The train was even snowbound on the tracks for twenty-four hours between Albany and Buffalo, New York. Union soldiers crowded into each car, singing songs and shouting excitedly to one another. They knew that the war was nearly over and that the North would win.
When General Sherman visited the Gordon home, he brought Nell, Daisy, and Alice some rock candy. It was the first sugar the girls had ever eaten. National Archives
All the commotion and war talk confused Daisy. She missed home, and especially her father. Yet she wasn't afraid to tell strangers, "I've got a papa down in the Rebel army. I love him lots!"
After such a long and uncomfortable journey, the Gordons must have been relieved to finally arrive in Chicago. But almost as soon as she reached her grandparents' home, Daisy fell ill. A doctor was called, and she was diagnosed with what was then called brain fever, which may have been meningitis. Everyone feared that she might die.
CHAPTER THREE
Chicago and Reconstruction
GRADUALLY, DAISY'S FEVER SUBSIDED. The doctors told the family to keep her quiet and calm for the next weeks and months so that the illness would not return. Her worried mother and grandparents, as well as the rest of the family, obeyed the doctor's orders by giving in to her every whim. Slowly, Daisy recovered. A diet of fresh meat and vegetables helped her regain her strength. She ate her first chicken dinner and liked it so much that she repeatedly asked her grandmother to cook "that nice little beefsteak with legs."
Her mother later claimed that during this period her daughter changed from a "sweet and lovely [girl]" into one who was stubborn and refused to listen to reason. Daisy would carry these traits into adulthood and eventually learn to use them to her benefit.
Daisy's grandparents, John and Juliette Kinzie, owned a city block of grass-covered land, which made a perfect play area for her and Nell and Alice. Sometimes, Native American leaders stopped in Chicago on their way to meet with President Lincoln in Washington, D.C., and they camped on Grandfather's land. Daisy couldn't wait to see her first Indian.
She wasn't disappointed. One day, a party of Winnebago, including a young mother with a papoose on her back, appeared in the garden. Daisy recalled that she and her sister Nell "took up our stand behind a trellis thickly covered with honeysuckle. Here we could see and hear everything. Grandfather sat on a soapbox, the Indians, in a circle, on the ground." Daisy's grandmother served them lemonade and cakes.
"For a long time after they had taken their places, not a word was spoken.... At last, the Chief spoke.... Then a second Indian spoke ... and the council continued in just that way until every Indian had spoken and Grandfather had added his opinion at the end."
All that winter and early spring, chatter about the war swirled around the Kinzie household and the neighborhood. It puzzled four-year-old Daisy. Why were people talking about hanging President Jefferson Davis, who was Papa's friend? And why did everyone like Abraham Lincoln? No one liked him in Savannah.
On April 9, 1865, Daisy heard the clanging of cowbells outside. The sounds grew louder and louder. She ran to the front gate to see what was happening. People spilled out of houses into the street, yelling, laughing, and ringing bells. Daisy's grandfather shouted, "The war is over! The war is over!"
Daisy and Nell jumped up and down, crying out, "We've won, we've won!" Grand father Kinzie kneeled down and explained to his granddaughters in the gentlest way possible that the South had lost. Robert E. Lee, the commanding general of the Confederate army, had surrendered to General Ulysses S. Grant, head of the Union army.
Although he's not in this photo of a Winnebago/Omaha Indian Council meeting, Grandfather Kinzie often met with various tribes to discuss matters such as trade and conflicts with settlers in his role as a United States government Indian agent. He spoke thirteen Native American languages, and some tribes called him Shawniawkie, or "Silver Man," because of the silver ornaments he made and gave to them. National Anthropological Archives
While sitting on the front gate, Daisy sang "Dixie" as loudly as she could. Passing neighbors laughed and told her that the Confederacy had lost. "Where did it go?" she asked.
Less than a week later, on April 14, 1865, President Abraham Lincoln was shot at Ford's Theater in Washington, D.C., while attending a play. He died the next morning. After the funeral, a train carried Lincoln's body home to Illinois for burial.
All along the 1,600-mile-long train route, hundreds of thousands of mourners— men, women, and children—waited to say goodbye to
their president. The Kinzie family must have been in deep mourning too, for they had supported President Lincoln throughout the Civil War. It was possible that Daisy and her family were among the 125,000 Chicago mourners who paid their respects.
It was also a sad time in the South—they had just lost the war. Daisy's father frequently wrote to his wife from Hillsborough, North Carolina, a town about ten miles from Chapel Hill where he and his company had surrendered. Many of his letters were lost or never arrived, so we don't know if he or Nellie wrote anything to each other about the death of the president. However, Nellie Gordon did receive a letter from Willie dated April 29 saying, "This army has surrendered and the men composing it will be marching to their respective states starting in a few days."
Papa hoped to be allowed to return to Savannah so he could find out whether he could still make a living there. On May 16, he wrote to Nellie, "You'd best stay on in Chicago, till I send for you, for I don't know where to get bread for my mouth and for the present am helpless to fill four or even one more [mouth].... Kiss the chicks [children]."
Before the war, mail delivery had been quick and dependable. Following the war, it was unpredictable. If they arrived at all, letters might reach a large city by train, or a combination of boat and train. In the next weeks and months, there weren't many letters from Papa.
As the country struggled to regroup after the long and divisive war, so did Nellie and Willie. For Willie, it was hard to deal with defeat. He loved the South and the lifestyle he and his parents and grandparents had always enjoyed. It was even harder for him to picture his wife living happily among the conquerors of his army. He longed to hug Nell and Daisy and get to know Alice, who had been born while he was away fighting in the war. It was a dark time in their marriage.
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