from
Sheridan's birthplace, at the little town of Clyde, Sandusky County, in
the year 1828. This was James B. McPherson, Scotch-Irish by race as his
name shows, and, as his history was to show later, one of the worthiest
scions of that soldier-bearing stock. If Sheridan was the well-beloved
of his men, McPherson was singularly dear to those who were closest
to him and should have known him best. He was of a most affectionate
nature, tenderly attached to his home and kindred, as men are apt to
be if their homes are poor and their kindred have shared privation with
them; but McPherson kept through all his prosperity and success the
qualities which endear men to their fellows and comrades. The noble
friendship between Grant and Sherman is one of the most precious of
our national memories, but these great commanders seem to have loved
McPherson next after one another.

His father was a farmer who worked at the trade of blacksmithing when he
was not following the plow; and the boy helped him in the field and at
the forge. When James was thirteen, his father died, and then he got a
place in a village store, and did what he could to support his widowed
mother and orphan brothers and sisters. It is told that when he left
them on the farm he ran tear-blinded till he got out of sight, and
then sat down with his little bundle in the woods and cried with
homesickness. But he went to work, and he studied and read in his hours
of leisure, and when he got the promise of a nomination to West Point he
managed to spend two terms at the Norwalk Academy in preparing himself.
He was then so old that he was afraid he would not be admitted to West
Point; but once in the army he seemed to regain his youth. When he
took command of the Army of the Tennessee, under Sherman, he was only
thirty-two years old.

In one of the battles before Atlanta, in July, 1864, he was fired upon
by a Confederate skirmish line, while personally leading a movement of
his troops, and received a mortal wound. He rode a little way into the
woods to avoid capture, and then fell from his horse; and as he lay
there dying alone a private of an Iowa regiment found him, and cared for
him till he expired.

Sherman's grief for his loss was open and passionate. He wept over his
dead face, and in the report of his loss to headquarters he said, "Those
whom he commanded loved him even to idolatry; and I, his associate and
commander, fail in words adequate to express my opinion