A drive down Route 20 through Bellevue and into Clyde and a look to your right at the McPherson cemetery reveals a statue of a tall general pointing as if directing an army.
I have driven that highway numerous times and saw that statue since I have been a child, but I must admit that I never knew who it was.
I could guess that his name was McPherson since the highway was named McPherson Highway, the cemetery was called McPherson Cemetery, and there was a house across the street that was named the McPherson House, but I never knew who James Birdseye McPherson really was.
I never knew that James McPherson was best friends with General Ulysses S. Grant and General William T. Sherman. I never knew that he was the third greatest General for the Union Army during the Civil War, I never knew of a tragic love story between him and Emily Hoffman, and I never knew that this great man was killed when a bullet found his back from a Confederate skirmish.
His death catapulted him to notoriety and obscurity at the same time. He became a notorious figure for local historians and faded into obscurity on the national level.
His name is no longer mentioned with Ulysses Grant, William Sherman, or Robert E. Lee, and after a few generations, his name began to leave the memory of those local communities that surround him.
His name has faded so much that an eight-year-old boy can drive down McPherson Highway and stop at a light that is jammed in between McPherson Cemetery and the McPherson Home and have no idea who that statue represents.
Why was James Birdseye McPherson important?
What is the point of studying him?
How many of us will ever have to deploy an entire army or govern a city that was under siege for months?
Unless you are pursuing a life in the military, then none of us.
However, let me rephrase the questions and not focus on the man who became one of the three most powerful Generals in the Union Army and had many believing he would become President, but instead, the human side that we often forget about.
Tragic Love Story
James Birdseye McPherson’s father died in 1847 when he was nineteen years old. Two years later, he entered West Point and was promoted to Corporal.
He graduated at the top of his class and was handed his West Point diploma by Robert. E. Lee. By the time the Civil War broke out, McPherson had already accomplished quite a bit.
He had designed Alcatraz and had been given a series of promotions that landed him on Grant’s staff. This was all done by the time he was 31 years old.
The most compelling thing about McPherson to me was not his military accomplishments but the love story between him and Emily Hoffman.
Emily’s mother was a Confederate sympathizer from Baltimore and did not want her daughter to marry a man with Union sympathies, let alone a Union General.
She tried to sway her daughter to marry someone else. McPherson did not compromise his convictions for love but rather pursued Emily and showed her a great deal of respect. He honored her mother, although he did not agree, nor would he ever change his stance.
During this time, Abraham Lincoln promoted General Grant to be the commander of the entire Union Army. This led to McPherson becoming Governor of Vicksburg.
By all accounts, Union and Confederate, McPherson was a humanitarian who treated everyone fairly. His efforts not only won the hearts of his men and citizens of Vicksburg but also softened the resolve of Emily’s mother, who then granted permission for James to marry her daughter.
McPherson would soon request leave so he could marry Emily. It was granted to him, but he was recalled by General Sherman.
McPherson did not write Emily as often as he once did and finally sent her a letter asking her to wait even longer.
Emily wanted to marry James and was willing to wait. She received a letter from General Sherman apologizing to her for keeping McPherson. James returned and served his country well.
Then tragedy struck when James Birdseye McPherson was killed in a skirmish shortly before the Battle of Atlanta.
The Union won the Battle of Atlanta decisively but at a high cost to Generals Grant and Sherman. Both would mourn their friend, and Grant would go so far as to say he lost his “best friend.” Shortly after, Sherman would sit down and write Emily this letter:
HEADQUARTERS, Military Division of the Mississippi in the Field, near Atlanta Geo. August 5, 1864
My Dear Young Lady,
A letter from your Mother to General Barry on my Staff reminds me that I owe you heartfelt sympathy and a sacred duty of recording the fame of one of our Country’s brightest and most glorious Characters. I yield to none on Earth but yourself the right to excel me in lamentations for our Dead Hero. Why should death’s darts reach the young and brilliant instead of older men who could better have been spared?
Nothing that I can record will elevate him in your mind’s memory, but I could tell you many things that would form a bright halo about his image. We were more closely associated than any men in this life. I knew him before you did; when he was a Lieutenant of Engineers in New York, we occupied rooms in the same house.
Again, we met at St. Louis, almost at the outset of this unnatural war, and from that day to this, we have been closely associated. I see him now, so handsome, so smiling, on his fine black horse, booted and spurred, with his easy seat, the impersonation of the Gallant Knight.
We were at Shiloh together, at Corinth, at Oxford, at Jackson, at Vicksburg, at Meridian, and on this campaign. He had left me but a few minutes to place some of his troops approaching their position, and went through the wood by the same road he had come, and must have encountered the skirmish line of the Rebel Hardee’s Corps, which had made a Circuit around the flank of Blair’s troops.
Though always active and attending in person amidst dangers to his appropriate duties, on this occasion, he was not exposing himself. He rode over ground he had twice passed that same day, over which hundreds had also passed, by a narrow wood road to the Rear of his Established Line. He had not been gone from me half an hour before Col. Clark of his Staff rode up to me and reported that McPherson was dead or a prisoner in the hands of the Enemy.
He described that he had entered this road but a short distance in the wood, some sixty yards ahead of his Staff and orderlies, when a loud volley of muskets was heard, and in an instant after, his fine black horse came out with two wounds, riderless. Very shortly thereafter, other members of his staff came to me with his body in an ambulance. We carried it into a house, laid it on a large table, and examined the body. A simple bullet wound high up in the Right breast was all that disfigured his person. All else was as he left me, save his watch and purse were gone.
At this time, the Battle was raging hot and fierce quite near us, and lest it should become necessary to burn the house in which we were, I directed his personal staff to convey the body to Marietta and thence North to his family. I think he could not have lived three minutes after the fatal shot and fell from his horse within ten yards of the path or road along which he was riding. I think others will give you more detailed accounts of the attending circumstances. I enclose you a copy of my official letter announcing his death.
With affection & respect, W. T. Sherman
The letter is great for a historical perspective but comforted Emily a little. She remained secluded and would not emerge from her room for an entire year. She never married and would die June 15, 1891.
I wonder what it was like when Emily opened that letter from General Sherman. She already knew of McPherson’s death the day after the event happened through a telegram.
The news shocked her so much that she passed out. I wonder if when opening that letter with Sherman’s name on it, she had a small belief that what she had heard had not been true.
Perhaps, but we will never know.
The ending is tragic, but the legacy of McPherson is powerful.
