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First published in 1955, this is a fascinating biography of General James Birdseye McPherson (1828-1864), a career United States Army officer who served as a general in the Union Army during the American Civil War. The story carries McPherson from his birth near Clyde, Ohio in 1828 to his sudden death during the Battle for Atlanta in 1864. Son of pioneer parents who migrated to northern Ohio from upstate New York in the 1820's, McPherson, showing promise in school and at his store job, won an appointment to West Point, where he graduated top of the class of 1853. There followed a year of teaching mathematics at the military academy and then assignments with the corps of engineers, first at New York, where he served with William T. Sherman, then at San Francisco, where his task was strengthening the Alcatraz Island fortifications. Shortly after the onset of the Civil War, McPherson requested a transfer to the Corps of Engineers to further his career and, departing California in August...