Birthplace: near Clyde, Ohio.

U.S. Military Academy: Class of 1853 (1/52) Engineers.

Pre-war experience: Instructor at West Point, supervised harbor and river improvements and seacoast defenses on the Atlantic and Pacific coasts.

Rank: 1st Lieutenant, Captain, Lt. Colonel, Colonel, Brig. General, Major General.

Major Battles and Campaigns: Staff assignment with Halleck; Chief Engineer with U.S. Grant at Forts Henry and Donelson, and Shiloh; Vicksburg (XVII Corps); Atlanta Campaign - killed in action (commanded Army of the Tennessee).

Date of death: July 22, 1864.

Place of burial: Clyde, Ohio.

James B. McPherson was born in the town of Clyde, Sandusky County, Ohio on November 14, 1828; the eldest of four children. He secured an appointment to West Point and graduated first in his class in 1853. Among the fifty two classmates of his were some who would later become high ranking officers in the Civil War: Sheridan, Scholfield, Hood, Sill and Tyler. (JBM)

After leaving the US Military Academy, McPherson was engaged as an engineer at New York Harbor and later was in charge of fortifications in the harbor at San Francisco. With the start of the Civil War he was promoted to Lieutenant Colonel November 21, 1861; Colonel May 1, 1862 and Brigadier General of Volunteers May 15, 1862. After transferring to the staff of Ulysses S. Grant, he was Chief Engineer at Fort Henry, Fort Donelson, Shiloh and at the sieges of Cornith and Iuka. In 1863 he was given command of the 17th Army Corps, where at the siege of Vicksburg his Corps had the center. After Grant left to assume command of the Army of the Potomac, Sherman replaced Grant and McPherson replaced Sherman as head of the Army of the Tennessee. While on the left flank at the Battle of Atlanta, McPherson came upon a skirmish line of Confederates on July 22, 1864 and was mortally wounded. He is the highest ranking officer in the Union Army to be killed in battle. His body was moved to Clyde where it was buried in the McPherson Cemetery. (JBM)

McPherson, the new commander of the Army of the Tennessee, was intelligent and conscientious but, as events would reveal, deficient in intiative and enterprise. (Castel 7)

On July 26, 1864, four days after Major General James B. McPherson was killed, Sherman wrote his wife, "I lost my right bower in McPherson." Three days later, he wrote another letter home in which he stated, "McPherson's death was a great loss to me. I depended much on him." (ng)

McPherson was loved by his troops, his commander, and by those who knew him. He was planning to get married to his fianc�e Emily Hoffman when he could get a furlough. John Bell Hood wrote:

I will record the death of my classmate and boyhood friend, General James B. McPherson, the announcement of which caused me sincere sorrow. Since we had graduated in 1853, and had each been ordered off on duty in different directions, it has not been our fortune to meet. Neither the years nor the difference of sentiment that had led us to range ourselves on opposite sides in the war had lessened my friendship; indeed the attachment formed in early youth was strengthened by my admiration and gratitude for his conduct toward our people in the vicinity of Vicksburg. His considerate and kind treatment of them stood in bright contrast to the course pursued by many Federal officers. (ng)

Sherman in his official report of the death of McPherson, said in part:

The country generally will realize that we have lost not only an able military leader, but a man who had he survived, was qualified to heal the national strife which has been raised by designing and ambitious men." (ng)