Gordon
Gordon names 4 different subjects across the 6 encyclopedias on this shelf. Each is set out below.
Gordon CHARLES GEORGE, called "Chinese Gordon" and "Gordon Pasha
Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)
CHARLES GEORGE, called "Chinese Gordon" and "Gordon Pasha," an English soldier; born in Woolwich, England, Jan. 28, 1833. He entered the Royal Engineers in 1852, and served in the Crimea (1854-1856). The Taeping rebellion in China he completely crushed by means of a specially trained corps of Chinese. On his return to England with the rank of colonel, he was appointed chief engineer officer at Gravesend. From 1874 to 1879 he was governor of the Sudan under the khedive. For a few months in 1882 he held an appointment at the Cape, and had just accepted a mission to the Kongo from the King of the Belgians when he was sent to withdraw the garrisons in the Sudan, which were at the mercy of the insurgent ne mahdi. He was shut up in Khartum by the rebels, and gallantly held that town for a whole year. A British expeditionary force under Lord Wolseley was dispatched for his relief; an advance corps of which sighted Khartum, Jan. 24, 1885, to find that the town had been treacherously delivered into the hands of the mahdi two days before, and Gordon murdered. His character was marked by strong religious feelings, which made him somewhat of a fatalist.
Gordon GEORGE ANGIER, an American clergyman and writer
Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)
GEORGE ANGIER, an American clergyman and writer; born in Scotland in 1853. He attended the common schools in Scotland and removed to the United States in 1871. He graduated from Bangor Theological Seminary in 1877 and from Harvard University in 1881. He was ordained to the Congregational ministry in 1877, and was pastor of churches in Maine and in Greenwich, Conn., from 1881 to 1883. In the following year he was appointed pastor of the Old South Church, Boston. He was university preacher at Harvard from 1886 to 1890, and at Yale from 1888 to 1901. He was an overseer of Harvard University from 1897 to 1916. He was a member of the National Institute of Arts and Letters. His published writings include "The Christ of To-day" (1895); "The New Epoch for Faith" (1901); "Through Man to God" (1906); "Humanism in New England Theology' (1920). He was president of the Harvard Alumni Association in 1918.
Gordon JOHN BROWN, an American military officer
Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)
JOHN BROWN, an American military officer; born in Upson co., Ga., Feb. 6, 1832; was graduated at the University of Georgia; admitted to the bar and began practice. When the Civil War broke out he was appointed a cap tain of infantry in the Confederate army; served with marked distinction throughout the war, during which he was wounded eight times; was promoted Brigadier-General in April, 1863, and later Major-General. In 1873 he was elected to the United States Senate and served in that body till 1880, when he resigned. In 1887-1900 he was governor of Georgia. On May 31, 1900, he was chosen commander-in-chief of the United Confederate Veterans. General Gordon was widely known as an orator on events of the Civil War. He died in Florida, Jan. 9, 1904.
Gordon CHARLES WILLIAM, a Canadian author
Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)
CHARLES WILLIAM, a Canadian author, writing under the name "Ralph Connor"; born in Indian Lands, Glengarry, Ont., Canada, in 1860. He was graduated at Toronto University in 1883 and at Knox College in 1887; was a missionary to Banff, etc., Rocky Mountains, 1890-1894. He wrote "Beyond the Marshes"; "Black Rock"; "Given's Cañon"; "The Sky Pilot"; "Ould Michael"; and "The Man from Glengarry" (1901); "The Foreigner" (1909); "Corporal Cameron of the Northwest Mounted Police" (1912).
What Has Changed in the Last Century
Collier's 1921 account of "Chinese Gordon" reflects the high Victorian cult of the martyr of Khartum; that cult was already being punctured by Lytton Strachey's Eminent Victorians (1918), and modern biographers read his refusal to evacuate the Sudan as disobedience to his orders rather than pure gallantry. The Mahdist state that killed him was destroyed by Kitchener at Omdurman in 1898, the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan became independent in 1956, and in 2011 it split again with the secession of South Sudan; Gordon's equestrian statue was removed from Khartoum in 1958 and now stands at Gordon's School in Woking, Surrey. Of the others, John Brown Gordon's governorship of Georgia ran 1886–1890, not the "1887-1900" printed here, and his reputation now turns less on his Civil War oratory than on his role in Reconstruction-era white supremacist politics, which has made his monument at the Georgia Capitol contentious. Charles William Gordon, hugely popular in 1921 as "Ralph Connor", died in 1937 and is now read mainly by students of Canadian literature; George A. Gordon, who died in 1929, is remembered only within the history of liberal New England Congregationalism.
Written for this edition, 2026.