Named for John Brown Gordon, a Confederate general, Georgia governor, and U.S. Senator, this school began as Chattooga Academy, completed in May 1836 when this area was inhabited mostly by the Cherokee Nation. Built in a classic Georgian simplicity at a cost of $815, it became closely tied to La Fayette's Civil War history. In early September 1863, the Federal Army of the Cumberland's advance into northwest Georgia threatened the communications of Confederate General Braxton Bragg's Army of Tennessee and prompted the evacuation of Chattanooga on September 8. Bragg moved about 25 miles south to La Fayette and made his headquarters at the Academy from September 10 through 17, working each day under a large oak in front of the school. He left to observe activities at Davis's Cross Roads on September 11 and at Lee and Gordon's Mills on September 13, returning each evening, and from here planned his army's strategy for the Battle of Chickamauga, fought 15 miles north from September 18 through 20, 1863. Near dawn on June 24, 1864, about 1,000 Confederate cavalrymen under Brigadier General Gideon J. Pillow attacked about 400 Federals occupying La Fayette. A two-pronged attack from the south and west was at first successful, and Confederate Captain William V. Harrell's Alabama battalion drove some of Union Colonel Louis D. Watkins' Kentuckians from the Academy and took possession of it. The Confederates pushed toward the center of town and came close to forcing Watkins' surrender, but the arrival of the Federal 4th Kentucky Mounted Infantry Regiment under Colonel John T. Croxton turned the fight. The Confederate 8th Alabama Cavalry Regiment, made up principally of conscripted young boys and old men in their first battle, fought dismounted and retreated in panic, with a number captured before they could reach their horses, many near the Academy. Among them was 44-year-old Private Thomas Jefferson White of Fayette County, Alabama, who was sent to Camp Morton in Indianapolis, Indiana, contracted pneumonia there during the winter of 1864-65, and died shortly after being exchanged; although not listed as killed in the Battle of La Fayette, he ultimately died because of it. The 8th Alabama suffered the largest number of Confederate casualties in the action, and total Confederate losses were 24 killed, 53 wounded, and 77 captured, while Watkins reported 4 killed, 7 wounded, and 64 captured, most taken near the Academy. After the war, the Academy continued until 1921 under various names. The oak known as Bragg's Oak stood until lightning felled it in 1925. The building was renamed John B. Gordon Hall in its centennial year of 1936, Gordon having attended the Academy as a boy, and it has since served a variety of community purposes.

Photo: Mark Hilton

Photo: Mark Hilton

Photo: Mark Hilton

Photo: Mark Hilton