“We had probably marched half an hour since leaving Logan, and were getting pretty near back to our main line of works, when the Colonel ordered a halt and knapsacks to be unslung and piled up.  I tell you it was a relief to get them off, for it was a fearful hot day, and we had been marching almost double quick.  We knew that this meant business though, and that we were stripping for the fight, which we would soon be in.  Just at this moment we saw an ambulance, with the horses on a dead run, followed by two or three mounted officers and men, coming right towards us out of the very woods Logan had cautioned the Colonel to avoid.  When the ambulance got to where we were it halted.  It was pretty well out of danger from the bullets and shell of the enemy.  They stopped, and we recognized Major Strong, of McPherson’s Staff, whom the all knew, as he was the Chief Inspector of our Corps, and in the ambulance he had the body of General McPherson.  Major Strong, it appears, during a slight lull in the fighting at that part of the line, having taken an ambulance and driven into the very jaws of death to recover the remains of his loved commander.  It seems he found the body right by the side of the little road that we had gone out on when we went to the rear.  He was dead when he found him, having been shot off his horse, the bullet striking him in the back, just below his heart, probably killing him instantly.  There was a young fellow with him who was wounded also, when Strong found them.  He belonged to our First Division, and recognized General McPherson, and stood by him until Major Strong came up.  He was in the ambulance with the body of McPherson when they stopped by us.

“It seems that when the fight opened away back in the rear where we had been, and at the left of the Sixteenth Corps which was almost directly in the rear of the Seventeenth Corps, McPherson sent his staff and orderlies with various orders to different parts of the line, and started himself to ride over from the Seventeenth Corps to the Sixteenth Corps, taking exactly the same course our Regiment had, perhaps an hour before, but the Rebels had discovered there was a gap between the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Corps, and meeting no opposition to their advances in this strip of woods, where they were hidden from view, they had marched right along down in the rear, and with their line at right angles with the line of works occupied by the left of the Seventeenth Corps; they were thus parallel and close to the little road McPherson had taken, and probably he rode right into them and was killed before he realized the true situation.

“Having piled our knapsacks, and left a couple of our older men, who were played out with the heat and most ready to drop with sunstroke, to guard them, we started on again.  The ambulance with the corpse of Gen. McPherson moved off towards the right of the Army, which was the last we ever saw of that brave and handsome soldier.