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James B. McPherson

U.S. Army general in the American Civil War (1828–1864)

Layered newspapers, civic records and oral-history reels arranged as chronological evidence
History and societyInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionSep 13, 2026
Entity authoritySource title only
Source-derived summary

James Birdseye McPherson (/məkˈfərsən/) was a career United States Army officer who served as a general in the Union Army during the American Civil War. McPherson was on the general staff of Henry Halleck and later of Ulysses S. Grant and was with Grant at the Battle of Shiloh. He was killed during the Battle of Atlanta, facing the army of his old West Point classmate John Bell Hood, who paid a warm tribute to his character. He was the second-highest-ranking Union officer killed in action during the war.

Editorial summary

“James B. McPherson” enters the record as u.S. Army general in the American Civil War (1828–1864). Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what James, McPherson and Army can confirm, complicate or overturn.

Editorial reviewA strong contextual entry point for chronology, institutions and public events when official records are distinguished from later interpretation. The current 89-word lead offers orientation but no explicit four-digit date, so chronology should not be assumed. The selected authority fields contribute no independent date. Its strongest next move is a source search built around James, McPherson and Army.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

“James B. McPherson” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, James, McPherson and Army provides the most credible route into that argument.

Evidence profile

Chronology, provenance and viewpoint should be read together before a broad social or political interpretation is accepted. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 13, 2026.

Critical limits

Institutional narratives can privilege the records that survived while minimizing voices that were never formally collected. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Compare institutional narratives with records created by participants and affected communities. Dates and formal titles are useful anchors, but not substitutes for context.

Best used for
  • Event chronology
  • Institutional context
  • Locating named record creators
Verify next

Contemporary correspondence, government or organizational records, oral histories and cited historical scholarship.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “James B. McPherson”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow James B. McPherson primary sources, James B. McPherson archive and James research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “James B. McPherson”?
  2. Who created the surviving record, and for what administrative purpose?
  3. What chronology connects this entry to wider political or social change?
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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “James B. McPherson” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.