Sallie Chapman Gordon Law was born in Wilkes County, North Carolina, the daughter of Chapman Gordon, of Virginian descent, and his wife Charity King of South Carolina. From both sides of her house she inherited martial blood, but especially from her father, who while in his teens had fought at King's Mountain and had served throughout the rest of the Revolutionary War under Generals Marion and Sumter.
In 1825 Sallie Chapman settled in Forsythe, Georgia, where she dwelt until 1834 when she removed to Columbia, Tennessee. Ten years later she moved to Memphis in order to obtain better advantages for her seven children, and there passed the remainder of her long life.
She was self-reliant, charitable, unselfish, and devout, as her family and social relations had already proved her, and the outbreak of war offered a broader field for her executive ability and strength of will. Although she was thoroughly identified with the Confederacy by family ties, with more than two score near kinsmen--most distinguished of whom was her nephew, Gen. John B. Gordon--in the ranks and on the official list, she chafed at having only one son to lend to the Confederate armies and was quick to dedicate her own energies to the aid of her section.
She was active in organizing in Memphis, in April 1861, the Southern Mothers' Hospital. She had, at her own expense, twice journeyed to Columbus, Kentucky, conveying food and clothing from her hospital to the sick soldiers there. Upon the breaking up of the Memphis hospitals the money in the Southern Mothers' treasury was invested in quinine, morphine, and opium, which Mrs. Law carried into the Confederacy on her person, distributing it chiefly in the hospitals at LaGrange, Georgia, where she had the compliment of having a hospital named for her.
After the war the hospital organization became the Southern Mothers' Association, one of the earliest memorial societies; and until shortly before her death Mrs. Law, as its only president, continued her labors in memory of the Confederacy and its sons, cooperating with other groups in erecting monuments, marking graves, and disseminating historical material about the Southern cause and its conduct. In her sixteen-page pamphlet, Reminiscences of the War of the Sixties Between the North and South (1892), she recounts a few of her many wartime experiences, revealing without ostentation how naturally, lovingly, and gratuitously she gave herself to the Confederacy during the war years and afterward.
Sallie Chapman was one of the founders of the Southern Mothers' Hospital, which under her leadership expanded from its original twelve-bed capacity to an institution that, after the battle of Shiloh, cared for hundreds of wounded. At Columbus, Georgia, having learned of the destitution in Gen. Joseph E. Johnston's division at Dalton, she was instrumental in collecting hundreds of blankets, socks, and underclothing, which she went in person to see distributed to the soldiers. Officers and men idolized her for her intrepidity and cheerful confidence, and General Johnston ordered a review of thirty thousand troops in recognition of her services.
Sallie Chapman Gordon married, June 28, 1825, near Eatonton, Georgia, Dr. John S. Law.
