His father was kneeling beside the bed, with a face as white as his mother's, and a look of such mingled agony and resignation that Gordon never forgot it.

As, because of his father's teaching, the son in later life tried to be just to every man, so, for his mother's sake, he remembered to be kind to every woman.
In the great upheaval that came just before the war, Major Keith stood for the Union, but was defeated.

When his State seceded, he raised a regiment in the congressional district which he had represented for one or two terms.

As his duties took him from home much of the time, he sent Gordon to the school of the noted Dr.Grammer, a man of active mind and also active arm, named by his boys, from the latter quality, "Old Hickory." Gordon, like some older men, hoped for war with all his soul.

A great-grandfather an officer of the line in the Revolution, a grandfather in the navy of 1812, and his father a major in the Mexican War, with a gold-hilted sword presented him by the State, gave him a fair pedigree, and he looked forward to being a great general himself.
He would be Julius Caesar or Alexander the Great at least.