Major General James B. McPherson, the commander of the Union's Army of the Tennessee, had graduated at the head of his West Point class and was a friend of General John Bell Hood, then commanding the Confederate defense of Atlanta. During the Battle of Atlanta, McPherson was riding to deploy his troops against a Confederate counter-attack when he encountered a group of Confederate skirmishers and was shot. He was the second highest ranking Union officers to die in battle during the war. He was thirty-five years old. (By John Osborne)
Source Citation
Charles P. Roland, An American Iliad: The Story of the Civil War (New York: McGraw Hill, 2002), 184.
Record Data
Date Certainty
Exact
Type
Battles/Soldiers
