Captain John D. Young, the former commander of Scales’s brigade sharpshooters, wrote this article in 1878 to describe the formation, training, and employment of the sharpshooters. Along with W. S. Dunlop’s book Lee’s Sharpshooters it remains one of the most comprehensive accounts written by a former sharpshooter. I have omitted some of Young’s battle descriptions that were simply generalized accounts.

Philadelphia Weekly Times

January 26^th, 1878

Annals of the War

Chapters of Unwritten History

A Campaign with Sharpshooters:
The Organization of the Riflemen in the Confederate Service, Their Work in the Wilderness and at Petersburg , Personal Reminiscences of Some Distinguished Confederate Officers.

By Captain John D. Young

Late Commandant of Sharpshooters, Scales’ Brigade, Third Corps, Army of Northern Virginia

Long before the close of the campaign of 1863, in the late war between the States, the Army of Northern Virginia, as well as its historic antagonist, the Army of the Potomac , had completely inaugurated the system of fighting from behind earthworks. So universal had this become that intrenching tools formed part of the soldier’s regular equipment as much as did his arms of offense, and the spade and mattock were ranked almost equal in importance with the sabre and rifle. The use of trenches by the Confederate army was dictated by consideration higher than the mere effort of an individual to protect his own life. It was, on public grounds, a matter of dire necessity; its numbers, reduced by disease and death in hospital and field, were far from being recuperated by conscription, sweeping as it was, of 1864. It was apparent to all that every life must be husbanded, and that every advantage of position must be taken, both as to nature and the additions of art, to render the weaker side able to cope with it adversaries. Thus it came to pass that whenever a line was formed or a position occupied where there was any likelihood of attack, trenches were dug at once and earthworks thrown up, which were elaborated and extended as the approach of the enemy increased the chances of an action. These preparations extended even to the picket line. The remains of this vast system of defense are to be seen at this day, and will long be regarded as notable monuments of that long and desperate strife, whose other sequels, we hope and believe, are now being gradually effaced by the pitying touch of time and the wise councils of later statesmanship. The chain of earthworks around Petersburg was fifty miles in extent; being an effort, which proved futile in it ultimate issue, to make the inanimate soil, however “sacred,” supply the absence of flesh and blood. In the campaign of 1864 the necessity of still further utilizing the limited forces of the army loomed up as of prime consideration. It was also noticed that a great part of the fighting fell on the pickets; that these troops were time and again pushed in on that main body, and that, as a general thing, being unable to resist the slightest exhibition of force in their front, they roused the line when driven in, and caused the greatest trouble and annoyance.

The Old System of Pickets

Up to this time picket and outpost duty of all kind was performed by details drawn hap-hazard from the various companies of the regiments constituting a brigade; a single regiment or even company being rarely sent as a body on this kind of service. The promiscuous details were usually placed under officers with whom they were as utterly unacquainted as each man was with his right and left file. As a natural consequence, the details failed to act in the presence of the enemy as a compact, confident body; for if there is any one thing more than any other that is well calculated to destroy the efficiency of a soldier, it is the suspicion that his comrades are going to give way. It is equally a confessed fact that, when satisfied as to the courage and fidelity of one another, men who will fight at all will fight till overcome by hostile numbers. This was the state of things that presented itself to the leaders of the army in 1864. In the sharp economy of war, the use of works was a fixed fact and acknowledged advantage. Some improvement must now be made in the character of the troops who did the outpost duty. To remedy the inefficiency of the “details,” and to form a picket line that on sudden occasions might do the work of a line of battle; in short, by discipline and association, to render a small body of troops equal in strength and effectiveness to twice or even thrice their number—this was the problem, and the solution of which was of no small labor to General Lee.

To accomplish such results no plan of organization presented itself in the formation of either army. The only thing known among military men that would in any degree approach the formation indicated, was the embodiment of a regiment for each division, after the manner of the Zouave regiments of the French service. There, as is known, to each division of the army is attached a corps who act, as Kingslake aptly puts it, as “the spike-head of the division,” being used either to push in or else ward off attack. There was, however, a serious difficulty in the way of constantly employing a regiment on this kind of duty; for while one regiment, taken as a whole, were always to be relied on for line fighting, it was well night impossible to find such an organization in any division as combined all the qualities found necessary for single and determined picket fighting. Besides, at this time, it was considered a duty not only extra dangerous, but otherwise specially onerous and distasteful; and regimental commanders were inclined to stand on their rights of only acting in their regular routine on the brigade roster. Therefore it was decided, after long deliberation, to adhere to the old plan of details, but to introduce such improvements as would remedy the most obvious defects; especially that of having new men and officers on every occasion that presented itself. To accomplish these ends an order was issued from division headquarters for the formation of battalions or corps of sharpshooters for each brigade. This order organized a body of troops that gained no little renown in the service. How often they stood before the fierce advance of the enemy the unwritten history of the Army of Northern Virginia will attest; while their unmarked graves that fringe the lines from the Wilderness to Petersburg, and the thinned ranks they paraded on the last muster at Appomattox Court-House, will prove that in heroic devotion they were second to none on an army that challenged the admiration of the world.

The Organization of the Sharpshooters

                The organization and operation of the corps of sharpshooters of the Army of Northern Virginia will possess, if not for the general public, at least for the intelligent military student, the interest that naturally attaches to every movement new in the details of the service—a service the necessities of which developed many expedients before unknown in the annals and science of war. There were incidents connected with its manner of independent and advanced operations which cannot fail, from their unique and striking character, to possess a common interest for all. It was the fortune of the sharpshooters to experience all the romance and glamour of war; and to these was added enough of a danger to make the service exciting and exhilarating. Place between the lines of two great armies they saw at least the beginnings of all great movements, and had the first intimations of that pleasurable feeling—the gaudia certaminis—which battle ever brings to the heart of the true soldier. Their time was not spent in weary waiting for the order to advance; nor were they, except in rare instances, subjected to the trying ordeal of remaining quiet under fire, with no power to return the compliment. From the earliest opening of the battle to its tragic close the ears of the sharpshooters were made familiar with the peculiar music of the rifle, and their whole mind was exercised in the problem of affording as much annoyance as possible to the enemy. A battalion was composed of one commandant, eight commissioned officers, ten non-commissioned officers, one hundred and sixty privates, four scouts and two buglers, specially selected and drafted from each brigade. These were divided into four companies, equally officered. As it was a matter of the utmost importance that men should be chosen of tried courage and steadiness, who were good marksmen and possessed of the requisite self-confidence, great care and caution were exercised in the drafts. Company commanders were ordered to present none for duty with the sharpshooters who did not come up to the standard; while the commandant of each battalion, assisted by his lieutenants, personally superintended the examination of all recruits offered for this branch of the service. The company officers in the corps were equally set apart for their military reputations in respect to zeal, intelligence, and personal gallantry. As soon as the requisite number of men was obtained a separate camp was established, and in every respect the command was placed on an independent footing—reporting, as in the case of a regiment, directly to brigade headquarters. Thus closely associated together, rank and file soon learned to know and rely upon each other. Still further to increase this confidence, the companies were subdivided into groups of fours, something like the comrades de battaille of the French army. These groups messed and slept together, and were never separated in action save by casualties of disability and death. The further strengthening of this body of troops was hope to be accomplished through drill.

Sharpshooter’s Drill

                In order to assimilate the men and make them fully acquainted with the special character and details of the duties to which they were assigned, and above all to impart that sense of self-reliance so necessary for outpost fighting, a new system of drill and exercise was adopted. This scheme was presented in the form of a brochure, translated from the French by General C.M. Wilcox, and comprised the skirmish drill, the bayonet exercise and practical instruction in estimating distances. In a short time men, eager to learn and easily handled, not only became proficient in their drill and excellent shots, but from frequent practice could correctly measure with a glance the distance intervening between themselves and the objects at which they aimed. The drill was conducted by signals on the bugle, as the line when deployed was too extended to be reached by the voice, or, when silence was the requisite, by the wave of the sword of the officer in command. The sharpshooters were armed with the improved Enfield rifle; the scouts with rifles of the Whitworth make, with telescopic sights. In order to preserve the elan of the corps and to make the service sought after, it was ordered that this body should be exempted from all picket duty except in the face of the enemy. They were also assigned to the right of the column—the front in advance, the rear in retreat. This freedom from the irksome and distasteful duties of the camp, which were always especially detested by the average Confederate soldier—unaccustomed as he was to do any menial labor for himself—made a place in the ranks of the sharpshooters an honor much to be desired. There was, in the very joyous nature of the service, something that had a great deal of charm for the soldier, to which, to descend from sentiment to business, may be added the very general ambition at that time prevalent, and by no means confined to the line, to be among the first to handle the plunder of the enemy’s camps. It was in this manner, as briefly related above, that the opening campaign of 1864 found every brigade of the Army of Northern Virginia provided with a body of picked troops to guard its front or clear the way for its advance. It was truly a “spike-head” of Toledo steel, which was not suffered to rust from disuse in the days that so quickly followed. It was kept bright and sharp by constant employment in the series of actions that lasted throughout that eventful year, beginning with the great battle of the Wilderness.

The Battle of the Wilderness

Though the sharpshooters were not employed in this engagement with any exclusive or even special reference to the method and distinctive purpose of their formation, it was the first action on which they fought as a separate organization….

[description of the Battle of the Wilderness omitted]

Into the Hottest Fire

[description of the Battle of the Wilderness omitted]

The Wilderness was a field well adapted by the very nature of the country to the operations of the sharpshooters; but so fierce had been the engagement that no opportunity was afforded them for the display of maneuvers or marksmanship.

An Endless Picket Fight

                The movement from the Wilderness to Spotsylvania Court-House was exceedingly arduous  to the sharpshooters, who were compelled to march to the left flank of the column, deployed as if in regular line. At last the Court-House was reached; but it failed to afford the expected rest. Almost immediately the command was thrown forward and began what appeared to be an endless picket fight. One day was reflexive of another, though the elements of exposure and excitement prevented their succession from becoming monotonous. At 3 o’clock, before light, the command would be moved out of the camp inside the main lines, and sent forward to relieve the regimental details who did guard duty at night. Arrived on the picket line, while darkness still reigned, the men were placed in the rifle-pits, and, arranging themselves as comfortably as circumstances permitted, proceeded to make what their rations afforded in the way of breakfast. This was generally light, except when contributions had been levied from some contraband source, or the camp of the enemy had been put into requisition. Even during this daylight repast the more adventurous would stop at times to take a shot at the gentlemen in front, while all had the occasion to look about very sharply to keep their own brains from being knocked out. The rage after plunder was fatal to some of our very best men. Some incidents of this passion are worth relating. A sergeant name Warren , during the day killed a man a short distance in front of his pit, and at night, just before the command was relieved, moved quickly forward and possessed himself of the dead soldier’s effects. It proved a rich haul, and the next morning the men were wild for an attack, beholding in each hostile form the bearer of property, of which they burned to possess themselves. All day long they were taking what I may call pot-shots at the enemy’s videttes, and in keeping away their friends, who might have otherwise removed the spoils. The impatience of the sportsmen was too great that night to wait until it was fully dark; they stole off in the gray dusk of the evening, and some of them—among whom was Sergeant Warren—returned no more. We passed the next morning their bloated corpses on the very spot where their operations had been so rashly begun. After this occurrence stringent orders were issued against the practice of going outside of and beyond the lines. In this manner the command spent its days; sometimes on the outposts, sometimes in the rear; but always prepared to move at an instant’s warning. It so happened that we were not on picket service on the 12^th of May, a day long to be remembered as the bloodiest of all the horrible fights that raged along the lines, and only equaled in mortality in proportion to the numbers engaged, by Cold Harbor , of the same year. The sharpshooters, however, saw and acted an important part of the stubborn engagement. Our position having been changed on the night of the 11^th to a road in the rear of the works, we were startled the morning of the battle by the sudden apparition of a mounted officer, who dashed forward and shouted—“Right shoulder shift, arms! File left! Double quick, march!” “This way!” and away the sharpshooters went after him, not stopping to ask for his authority or otherwise to “reason why.” As the command hurried through the woods the ears of the men were saluted with the familiar roll of musketry and the occasional thunder of a big gun. As we debouched from the woods into the open, we came upon that fatal angle—the error, it is said, of General M. L. Smith, engineer-in-chief of the army—which gave so much trouble and which has passed into history as Johnson’s salient. The angle had been early recognized as the weak point of our line, and was so feared that the artillery which guarded it was withdrawn every night and sent in early each morning before light.

Hancock’s Assault

                The enemy in front of this salient was commanded by General Hancock, to whose skill and gallantry was intrusted an assault on our lines at that point. In the dusky light he came up with a rush; and just as our artillery, which was moving in battery at the same moment, galloped up and unlimbered for action, it was captured. Only a piece or two was fired. The infantry of Johnson’s division were overpowered almost as speedily; but the supports came up promptly and a hand to hand conflict ensued, during which the two forces were rarely as far apart as a dozen yards. At times, as if by mutual consent, there would be a cessation of the fire, but it would soon break out at some other point of the line, and, sweeping down, include the wasted antagonists in its folds. In the rear of each line were the supports, who were either to relieve the first or send in plenty of ammunition. There was no lack of ammunition that day.

                The training of the sharpshooters in actual war was completed by these actions, and the efforts of their officers were conceded to be successful beyond the most sanguine expectations. These battalions had already established the best reputation among friend and foe for endurance and stubborn fighting. The knowledge that the sharpshooters had the pickets lines enabled many a head to rest in peace of nights, undisturbed by visions of sudden attack and the midnight call to arms. The battalion was now the very lightest of light troops in every particular of impedimentia. The carried absolutely nothing save their arms and haversacks. The last were of but little use. The sharpshooters found it much less burdensome to make a raid for supplies on the line of the enemy than to carry knapsacks. When rations were ordered to be prepared for three days they were generally cooked and eaten at the same time; not a difficult thing to do in the Confederate service, where the ration was scientifically calculated to be the least that a man could live on. Sometimes blankets and fly-tents were carried, but only when there was to be a long march and no immediate prospect of a fight. In the face of the enemy these daring corps generally threw away everything but their arms, and relied for provisions on the chance of war. Their losses were heavy, but easily filled by detail of the best material of the line. The prestige of the sharpshooters was well kept up, and was the just subject of pride to their officers and at army headquarters.  And so, when General Grant changed his base, moving South. While Lee followed, describing the interior line, the sharpshooters brought up the rear of the latter, engaging in quite a few unrecorded actions, gaining high credit for the fighting, and occasionally rewarded by a good bit of plunder.

                After General Grant’s failure to break our front a Cold Harbor, he suddenly decamped, bag and baggage, for the south side of the James river , masking his movement by covering his front with strong bodies of cavalry, supported by detached infantry. These covering troops were encountered at Riddle’s shop, half way between Cold Harbor and the River, in such heavy force as to induce General Lee to suspend the movement then in progress, of transferring Hill’s Corps across the James. In leaving Cold Harbor the sharpshooters were not ordered to follow until 10 A.M. Another delay resulted from the rifling of a bee-tree; and before reaching Riddle’s shop the dropping fire notified the rear guard that the armies were at it again. At this point General Lee and his staff rode rapidly to the front, hurrying as they did so the forward movement of the battalion. When we arrived on the ground we found that that details from the brigade were already engaged with dismounted cavalry on foot, with but poor success; while the advance of the whole corps was suspended till the force in front could be developed.

A Charge by the Sharpshooters

                We were at once put in, and three battalions from Wilcox’s division were ordered to support us. As we had to move across an open field, the officer commanding the details flatly refused to go; and the commandant in charge, rightly judging that it was better to proceed alone than to depend on troops who would hang back, promptly decided to do without these supports and ordered them back to the line, where they went with great cheerfulness. The word was then passed that both General Lee and General Hill would view the advance, and at the command “Forward!” a charge was made that swept the enemy from the field, disclosed his designs, and resulted in the hurrying of Hill’s Corps forward to Petersburg, where its presence was greatly needed. When Petersburg was reached the command was placed well on the right of the line, and the duties that devolved upon the sharpshooters were in consequence very light. The men became fat and lazy on the accumulated captures of previous campaigns, and nothing more serious was attempted as the days dreamily glided by than an occasional “blockade” escape into the city. This halcyon period was rudely disturbed by the combat of the 22^nd of June on the line of the Petersburg and Weldon Railroad. This affair, brilliant in all respects to the Confederate cause, has been noticed so slightly heretofore that the

details of the movement may well be given here, as its results in prisoners and guns, and, above all, in the fresh life imparted to the drooping spirits of the men, were of a magnitude not easy to be overstated. For a proper appreciation of the character of this action, some description is necessary of Major General William Mahone, the leader and moving spirit of the occasion. Mahone was a singular illustration of the fact that the Confederate service, while well calculated to develop the natural native aptitudes of its generals, did not afford all of them full scope for the exercise of the genius thus educed, but kept within narrow limits many high spirits which felt themselves capable of larger responsibilities, or wider fields than the cramped resources of the South admitted of their undertaking. He was a man of high personal courage and magnetic presence. A stern disciplinarian, he was greatly respected by his men, who, in the hour of battle, never fought so well as when under his immediate command. His frequent selection for the conduct of most delicate and difficult movements proved the high esteem in which he was held by General Lee. He was an officer in whom, it may be said, were blended the strategic qualities of Soult, and the ardent gallantry of Vandamme. Closely watching his front at all times, he never failed to strike the enemy whenever an opportunity offered, and his blows were always felt.

When General Grant, with the intention of more closely envelop­ing Petersburg , applied his old maneuvre of extending his left, he moved forward the Second and Sixth Army Corps for the purpose of seizing the Weldon Railroad. The movement was begun by the Second Corps, which marched to the Federal left and took position west of the Jerusalem plank road, their right connecting with the Fifth Corps. This movement at once drew out a strong force of Confederates to confront it, and a slight skirmish was the result. This happened on the 21st of June. That same night the Sixth (Federal) Corps moved up in rear of the Second Corps, and on a line parallel with it. It thus happened that when General Birney, com­manding the Second Corps, swung forward his left more closely to envelop the Confederate works, a gap was created between the Second and Sixth, which widened as the turning movement progressed. General Mahone promptly noticed the bad formation of this part of the line, and himself suggested to General Lee the feasibility of attacking the left flank of Birney, then thrown well forward in the air. The march of Mahone’s Division to the front was concealed from the enemy by the nature of the ground over which it passed to get into position. Nor, indeed, was his departure from the works observed; for, with great circumspection, even in details, he ordered the men to leave them one by one, dropping to the rear as if for any other purpose than that of going out to fight. The places of the absentees were gradually filled by an extension of the lines. In order to follow up the movement, the division of General Wilcox was dispatched to the right of Mahone, and was expected to render him support by moving to the front and connecting with his (Mahone’s) right, and by afterward conforming with the latter’s movements. The plan was a good one, and its results might have been very momentous. Mahone, moving cautiously to the front, holding his troops well in hand, furiously assaulted the left of Birney in flank and rear, carrying the line and capturing whole regiments and bat­teries. Penetrating further in the gap with one of his brigades, he struck the right of the Sixth Corps, and here rested, after vainly waiting for the expected support, which never came. After securing his guns and prisoners, Mahone returned to his works.        

The Sharpshooter’s Fire

                We will now follow the division of General Wilcox. These troops, moving well to the right, took position, took position at some distance from the Weldon road. When the sharpshooters were sent forward they soon developed a strong skirmish line of the enemy, which was speedily broken; and the advance still further disclosed an open field with no enemy in front except a skirmish line and the ordinary reserve. Evidently the left of the Sixth Corps was near at hand. Two brigades of the division were moved into position, and the inevitable intrenchments soon began to appear; but beyond a sharp picket fire in front there was no fighting. All evening we heard the firing to our left, and as it increased in volume an officer of the division staff was sent out to the picket line and informed the office in charge that the division would withdraw at once from its position; that it must do its best to hold the line with both flanks unprotected, and if forced back, was to make a run for it. The sharpshooters kept up a steady fight, and were glad to perceive that there was no disposition on the part of the enemy to advance; on the contrary, they seemed rather nervous lest we should do so. At nightfall, however, unwonted signs of activity among them were to be observed. Fresh troops were moved into line; the rattle of accoutrements and canteens could be heard, and the officer’s words of commands all indicated preparations for an early advance. The word was passed down our line to give them one volley and retire. When it was well dark, on the Federals came at a charge. Greatly to our relief we could hear the officers shouting out, “Hold your fire for the line of battle!” This was just the thing we wanted. We gave them one volley and broke for the rear like quarter-horses.

                There was a line of cavalry pickets in our rear; but these were alarmed at the shouting of the enemy and at once decamped, nor did they draw rein until they reached their camp. The fact that the sharpshooters got away without losing a man in the race, proved that they, on occasion, could show a clean pair of heels. Late that night it was learned that Wilcox arrived on the ground in rear of Mahone too late to be of any service. The ground had been reached by a retrograde movement. This ended this brilliant affair, which, successful as it was, was greatly marred in execution by the manner in which General Mahone was supported. If the division of Wilcox had been moved to the front the Confederates would have completely turned the left flank of the Sixth Corps; and these troops caught between two fires must have suffered great losses. It is a significant fact with regard to the various movements conducted by General Mahone, which reflected such lustre on himself and on the Confederate arms, that at no time was he placed under the command of any division commander. So great was the confidence reposed by General Lee in his skill and energy that in all cases he reported to the corps commander of directly to the general-in-chief.

The Battle of the Crater

                Almost immediately following the movement on Reams’ Station, in which the sharpshooters bore their full part and bore it well, was the battle of the Crater, an action fought entirely by Mahone, from which he gained enduring fame. Here, also, the sharpshooters covered themselves with glory, being always in the van and doing full service there. Their commandant, Captain Broadbent, a man of gigantic strength and stature, especially distinguished himself by his reckless daring. Like the brave Major Ridge who led the stormers at Ciudad Rodrigo, Broadbent was first in the works and fell at the foot of the Crater wall, pierced, it was said, with no less than eleven bayonet wounds. After Mahone drove the enemy from the captured mine and retook the pieces, when the line was re-established, a Napoleon gun belonging to Pegram’s Battery (which being just over the mine was blown up by its explosion) was found to be outside the line, at some distance in front of them. It was then almost death to show a head along the line, and the great question was how to get that gun in. Finally some adventurous spirits, being inspired by the promise of a furlough, crept at night to the front, fixed a strong rope around the muzzle, and so dragged it in in triumph. In this action the artillery was specifically well served, officers encouraging the men both by their presence and example. On battery to the south of the mine was handled with a degree of gallantry that challenged all honor. It was here that Lieutenant Colonel Frank Huger of South Carolina , a young officer of great promise and of high personal courage, with his own hands worked one of the guns, although out of the fight. The sharpshooters in this battle sustained heavy losses, having not only skirmished with the enemy during the entire evening, but also participating in the attack with the main line. The extent of the enemy’s losses is known; and the battle itself lives, alone of the Confederate victories, on the canvas of John E. Elder, of Richmond, whose picture is notable for the absence from it of every recognizable form figure of those who bore part in the heroic labors and perils of the bloody day. After this battle the army had a long rest, unbroken except by an occasional fusilade over some wretched deserter.

                At this time desertions from the Confederate army had become matters of such common occurrence that it was determined to put a stop to the evil by a summary execution of the law. When men had been taken for this offense there was held what was called a corps court martial; when they were found guilty they were remanded to their respective commands, that the sentence might be carried out. The sentence was executed with all the formalities suitable to such occasions, and the scene was well-calculated to strike terror to the hearts of those who contemplated the commission of this gravest of all military offenses. The brigade charged with the duty of executing the sentence was drawn up without arms, forming the sides of a hollow square. The condemned man with the firing party was marched around inside of the square, the band in front playing a dirge—usually the “Dead March in Saul.” These parades were the disgusting and disagreeable duty encountered during the whole war. Once can never forget the looks of the poor fellows moving slowly around to their death. Some were erect and composed; others so nearly dead from terror at the approach of death as the be reduced almost to a state of coma. After moving around the circle of troops, the condemned man was fastened to a stake and shot, and the brigades, filing slowly by the corpse, were dismissed to their quarters. There were, I am glad to say, no deserters from the sharpshooters, as was natural, for they were the elite of the army.

The Sharpshooters in Demand

                When the heavy winter days were ended and spring found us prepared to continue the unequal contest, General Lee, weary of waiting, his depleted command being somewhat strengthened by its long rest, determined to assume the initiative. Accordingly, on the 25^th of March, a movement was made on our left ( Fort Stedman ) which proved a failure. That very evening Grant delivered his riposte in the shape of a sharp thrust on our right at “ Battery 45.” Our pickets—only details were on duty—were driven in, and forced back almost under the works. The next day General Lee made a personal inspection of this portion of the lines, in company with Lieutenant General Hill and his division commanders. The picket line, as it remained, was undoubtedly faulty to the last degree, and General Lee, vexed with the burden of so many and such heavy responsibilities, seemed by no means disposed to tax his mind further with the assumption of details of this description. Turning sharply to General Hill, he exclaimed: “Here are your troops and yonder is the enemy. If you can’t establish your picket line, I can’t do it for you.” And with these words he rode away. General Hill that night ordered the sharpshooters of Wilcox to carry the crest in their front, and the next day found us strongly intrenched on a line commanding all the country before it. In moving to our right to meet the continued advances of the enemy in that direction, each day saw our works stripped of men, and each day found us fighting. The sharpshooters were in greater demand than ever before. It was a common thing for a general officer to request their assistance in the establishment of his picket lines. One instance of this kind is worthy of record. Three days before the enemy broke through the lines around Petersburg , they pushed up their skirmish line almost to our works, in front of General Cook, near Hatcher’s Run, with the view of masking their larger movements. Friday evening, a battalion of sharpshooters of Wilcox’s Division received orders to report to General Cook for duty. On reaching the quarters of that officer, they were informed that the command was told off for “nervous duty” in front of the line. We were placed in position with them by Captain Stephen W. Jones, a famous officer of the sharpshooters of Cook’s corps. That night the battalion moved on the enemy and with but slight loss captured their rifle-pits and re-established the picket line. The next day occurred the great break up and the death of A. P. Hill.

Death of General A. P. Hill

                It was under most singular circumstances that Lieutenant General A. P. Hill, an officer whose name will ever be inseparably connected with the glory of the Army of Northern Virginia, met his death. When the Federal commander for the last time applied his favorite tactics, and extended his left flank to envelop our right, General Hill’s Corps was massed at and beyond Hatcher's run, though a portion of his command held the works from “Battery 45” to the extreme right. His headquarters were still established near Petersburg . On Saturday evening he left the front at Hatcher’s run, there being no indication at that point of a forward hostile movement. This the writer knows, as having obtained permission from General Hill himself to return to Petersburg , and having ridden up the lines in company with him and his staff. Next morning before dawn the enemy carried several points of his line by reason of its extension, and the attenuation of its defense. Moving across the country, the victorious Federals re-established their pickets in the direction of the river. General Hill, apprised of this state of things at his headquarters, at once dispatched such of his staff as were with him to report the facts to General Lee, and to see what could be done toward repairing the disaster. Accompanied by a few couriers, he rode immediately afterward toward Hatcher's run, with the view of rejoining the main body of his command. He was repeatedly urged not to attempt the undertaking; but his sole and laconic reply was, “I must get to my corps.”

As the General and his party proceeded upon their way they found the country filled with detached bodies of Federal infantry, straggling and plundering. The first lot of these stragglers which was come across, uncertain of their strength, and perhaps awed by the appearance of a general officer—a sentiment natural to disciplined soldiery—quietly surrendered, and were sent to Petersburg in charge of three couriers. Accompanied only by Sergeant Tucker, General till continued on his way till, on reaching a point some four miles from Petersburg , on the plank road, they saw before them two Federal infantrymen. These men, seeing the mounted Confederates, took cover behind a tree. Hill, without hesitation, called to Tucker to ride them down; and, pushing forward in advance, received their fire with fatal effect. Thus perished, in the prime of life, a gallant officer, who had engaged in more pitched battles than he numbered years; who organized and fought with eminent success and daring the famous Light Division, and who handled the Third Corps of the army with the same vigilance, efficiency, and fidelity which distin­guished him in lower commands, and which so singularly recalled his image to the dying eyes both of Lee and Jackson. In tone, in character, and in military force, he was strikingly like Bessieres; and his death may also be compared with that of the commander of the Old Guard, who lost his life in an insignificant skirmish on the eve of the great battle of Lutzen. His death was peculiarly unfortunate at this time; but even his magnetic presence—and no man’s was more so—could hardly have redeemed the fortunes of the day. In fact, the army was so broken as almost to have lost its military attitude.

The Retreat

                With the beginning of the retreat began also the most arduous labors of the sharpshooters. To this body was assigned the duty of protecting the rear of the wearied and worn battalions of Lee that now moved slowly up the line of the Southside Railroad, contesting the way inch by inch with the determined pursuer. At Farmville a decided stand was made, and here the rear guard was joined by Fitz Lee and his cavalry. The fighting on the retreat, except in rare instances, did not reach the dignity of pitched battles; but one action that took place near Farmville deserves the record it had so far received from no pen or tongue. When the enemy reached this point the conduct of operations in the rear was intrusted to Major General Fitz Lee, of cavalry fame; an officer who, after the death of Stuart, ranked first in the army for energy, elan, and all the other qualities that make the ideal beau sabeur. With a small column of infantry and such of his own command as he was yet able to hold together, Fitz Lee stoutly guarded the rear of the retreating army. As the main column passed the bridge in rear of Farmville Fitz Lee in person held the town, gradually diminishing his front, which was closely pressed by the enemy, till there remained with him but a handful of men. Seated on horseback near the bridge he calmly watched the preparations for firing it, and directed the movements of the last groups that filed across. There he sat, a grand figure, in his own person the last remnant of the Army of Northern Virginia; and like Marshall Ney at the bridge Konno, he fired the last shot and was the last man to cross. As the final man was seen to be over, and when the bridge itself was in flames, the soldiers supposing him to be a vidette, shouted to him to ride across. Lee turned slowly toward them, ordered them to hurry across, and adding, “I am Fitz Lee,” plunged into the river below the bridge. He gained the opposite bank in safety, but not without difficulty and danger, and the quick fire of the horse artillery from the other side soon gave assurance of his presence among the guns.

                Hemmed in on all sides at Appomattox , General Robert E. Lee’s only hope was to cut his way through, and by the abandonment of his guns and baggage to force his path to the mountains. Having formed this resolution, Gordon was promptly dispatched forward, while the left flank was protected by moving in the four battalions of Wilcox’s sharpshooters. Two of these were engaged, and two more were moving into action. But a period to the fighting of the sharpshooters and all the rest of that “incomparable infantry” was now close at hand. When Custer rode through the Confederate lines an officer of General Lee’s staff was at once sent to recall the sharpshooters, and with the sound of their bugles to “cease firing,” in a few minutes silenced forever the guns of the Army of Northern Virginia.

This is the unedited version of the article that appeared in the July 2002 issue of America’s Civil War magazine under a slightly different title.

Shock Troops of the Confederacy:
The Sharpshooter Battalions of the Army of Northern Virginia

Fred L. Ray

Captain James McKnight’s regular army battery had already been overrun once that foggy October morning at Cedar Creek, losing a gun and several men. Now, as part of George Getty’s division, they waited on a low hill outside Middletown, Virginia, as another Rebel attack materialized out of the mist. The gunners gaped at the Confederate skirmishers loping wolf-like up the hill, howling their trademark yell. “I could not believe they were actually going to close with us,” said one, “until the men on the remaining gun of the left section abandoned it and retreated toward the old graveyard wall. Their front line was not in order, but there was an officer leading them, and I distinctly heard him shout: ‘Rally on the Battery! Rally on the Battery!’” The Yankee gunners managed to get off a last shot of double canister, but “as the Rebel veterans understood this kind of business they ‘opened out’ so that the charge did not hit any of them.” In a moment the Southerners were in amongst the gunners, “amid smoke, fog, wreck, yells, clash and confusion…man to man, hand to hand, with bayonet and musket butt on their side and revolvers, rammers, and hand spikes on ours!”

The Union gunners’ confusion is understandable – skirmishers were just not supposed to close with a strongly defended enemy position, much less assault it. These, however, were no ordinary skirmishers but the elite Corps of Sharpshooters of Ramseur’s Division’s – the shock troops of the Confederacy. They were, as one former member put it, “the spike-head of Toledo steel” that led both the advance and retreat of the army. The sharpshooters were, in fact, not skirmishers in the normal sense but powerful combat units in their own right. As a tactical innovation, they were fifty years ahead of their time, presaging both the “open order” of the late nineteenth century and the German stosstruppen of WWI. Unfortunately this Southern corps d’elite has received only a passing mention from historians – certainly nothing like the credit they deserve.

All armies of the day used skirmishers – a thin line of men spread out some distance in front of the main body. These soldiers provided advance warning of an enemy advance, then forced him deploy and harassed his main line. When the army was stationary they acted as pickets. One man swore that skirmishing had been “reduced to a science.” It depended, he said, “on two general rules: every man must keep concealed as much as possible behind trees, logs, fences, buildings, or what not, and each party must run upon the approach of its opponent with anything like determination.” To maximize their effectiveness, the tacticians of the day recommended that skirmishers carry rifles. Since most regiments (especially Confederate ones) were not armed entirely with rifled arms until second half of 1863, a common solution to was to distribute them to the flank companies and designate these as skirmishers. A “line of battle,” by contrast, stood elbow to elbow in a solid formation two ranks deep and fired by volleys.

Coordinating the skirmish line before the days of radios was a difficult proposition at best, and as it spread across a brigade front of four or five regiments or an entire division, the control problems only got worse. A brigade commander would find himself trying to give orders through his regimental commanders, who in turn had to get the orders up to their company commanders on the skirmish line. It also quickly became obvious that some men (and commanders) were much more suited to this type of work, which required marksmanship and a good deal of individual initiative, than others. Arming a flank company with rifles did not make its soldiers good shots, nor its commander someone who could act decisively without specific orders.

Two of the first men to explore solutions this tactical dilemma were Confederate Brigadier General Robert Rodes and one of his subordinates, Colonel Bristor Gayle of the Twelfth Alabama infantry. Unfortunately, since neither man survived the war, reconstructing the development of the sharpshooters necessarily involves some speculation.

At Seven Pines, fought in late May of 1862, Rodes had employed a whole regiment – John Gordon’s Sixth Alabama – as skirmishers across his entire brigade front. Although it provided a unified command for the skirmish line, Rodes had to halt his entire command just short of Casey’s Redoubt to reconcentrate the Sixth Alabama prior to the final assault, a move that cost his brigade dearly in casualties. Significantly, neither Rodes nor anyone else used this arrangement again.

A month later at Gaines’ Mill, Colonel Gayle (who was not a professional soldier, but who did have some prior military experience) tried something else. When a Yankee artillery battery started firing into his flank, Gayle sent out a detachment to suppress them. The unit came from across the regiment and consisted of four of the best shots from each company. Led by a promising young lieutenant named Robert Park, these riflemen so harassed the battery that it withdrew. One of Park’s men, Sergeant Jason Patton, captured a Union courier with an important dispatch.

That fall Robert Rodes and his outnumbered Alabama brigade put up a desperate defense against George Meade’s division at South Mountain. Rodes had to string his line out across the mountain so far that the regiments lacked any physical contact. The Alabamians put out skirmishers, but the advancing Yankees gobbled up almost all of them. The intrepid Lieutenant Park once again commanded the skirmishers of the Twelfth Alabama with marked success, but he, too, was captured when those of the neighboring regiment fell back without warning.

Although Colonel Gayle died at South Mountain, his innovations were not forgotten. That December, at Fredericksburg, Rodes organized the skirmishers of each regiment in the same way Gayle had done for the Twelfth Alabama. Each of the brigade’s five regiments contributed a forty-man detachment under a junior officer, and for the first time Rodes grouped them into an ad hoc battalion. Although Rodes’ brigade was not directly engaged at Fredericksburg, it was these skirmishers – now called sharpshooters – who pushed forward the day after the battle.

Rodes took the final step in January 1863 when he permanently assigned the young major of the Fifth Alabama, Eugene Blackford, as commander of the consolidated battalion, now to be called the Corps of Sharpshooters. Rodes explained to Blackford that “he had felt the absolute need of trained skirmishers always ready to go to the front instead of the miserable system heretofore existing of calling for details from each company hurriedly when approaching the enemy – who arrived at the head of the column in march all breathless, and utterly ignorant of the duty required of them – and besides company officers when called upon in this manner in entering battle, did not wish to lose a good man & so sent the worst they had. Thus the indifferent men in the brigade, indifferently commanded by any detailed officer, who knew not one of his men or any thing of the skirmish drill, were sent to protect the front. The consequences were inevitable – a feeling of insecurity in the main body – the necessity of keeping a second line for protection, the incessant alarms made by the men in the front, who mistook every movement.”

Under the new system, each regiment now designated a permanent forty-man company commanded by a lieutenant. They marched and bivouacked with their regiment but could be detached at any time for skirmishing or sharpshooting duties. As an extra inducement, they were exempted from fatigue duties. Blackford only accepted the best – any man who did not meet his strict standards of soldiering, marksmanship, and “fidelity to the Southern cause” went back to his unit. The regimental commanders resisted giving up their best men, but with Rodes’ backing Blackford prevailed.

Blackford immediately began an intensive program of training. After some experimentation with weapons they settled on the British-made Enfield rifle, which (with British ammunition) could hit a man-sized target out to eight hundred yards. Because of the black powder rifle’s low muzzle velocity, range estimation was an essential skill, and Blackford drilled his men relentlessly in it. He also instituted a rigorous marksmanship program, kept records, and sent back any man who failed to improve. Blackford himself carried a breech-loading Sharps rifle that he used to great effect – he claimed to be the best shot in the battalion. “I always carry a rifle into the action myself and use it faithfully too.”

Blackford solved the problem of controlling a strung-out skirmish line by using buglers, and even worked out a system of indicating ranges by bugle calls. At the end of January he wrote his mother: “I am very much interested in the instruction of a battalion of Sharpshooters, which has lately been organized in this brigade, and to the command of which I have been assigned. I have lately commenced drilling them by the bugle signals altogether. Tis a beautiful sight to see the line deployed for more than a mile, all controlled by the single sounds of a bugle. I am much in hopes that I shall be able to win some credit in line of battle, this as a general rule Skirmishers have had a poor chance, being brushed off the field early in the action.”

A month later he wrote that “my battalion of SharpShooters progresses finely. I drill them altogether by the bugle, and the merry clear notes of the bugles may be heard at almost any hour in good weather. I have now declared them fit for service, an have spoken for the first job that comes up.” As an identifying badge he allowed the men to wear “a little red trefoil shaped piece of flannel.”

Rodes seems to have been pleased with his experiment. When he took command of D. H. Hill’s division that spring he organized sharpshooter battalions on the same pattern in the rest of the division’s brigades as well.

Blackford and his sharpshooters soon got a chance to show their stuff. At Chancellorsville, the new battalion provided flank security for Jackson’s famous march around Hooker’s right, “marching their laborious way thru swamps & pine thickets.” Then, in a scene immortalized by James Power Smith, “the well-trained skirmishers of Rodes’s division, under Major Eugene Blackford, were thrown to the front” to scout the Union position and protect the Confederate deployment. Smith describes Stonewall sitting on Little Sorrel, “visor low over his eyes, lips compressed, and with his watch in his hand” with Rodes and Blackford in attendance. At Jackson’s command, Rodes nodded to Blackford, who had his bugler sound the advance, “and back came the responses from bugles on the right and the left, and the long line of skirmishers, though the wild thicket of undergrowth, sprang eagerly to their work.”

On the day after the battle the Sharpshooters drew the unenviable assignment of scouting Hooker’s dug-in position against the Rappahannock. “I lost many men,” wrote Blackford, “under a tremendous fire of grape & canister & musketry.  I was in more danger than I had ever been before, but I saw their forces & their position generally.” The next day they went in again, but this time the Yankees were gone.

Later that summer at Gettysburg the sharpshooters again proved their worth. On July 1^st Rodes’ division attacked the flank of the Union I Corps at Oak Hill, only to be attacked in turn by the advancing Union XI Corps. Rodes assigned Blackford’s battalion to cover the gap between Doles’ brigade and the rest of the division. Although heavily pressed by most of a Federal division, the sharpshooters fell back in good order, taking a heavy toll. It was quite an improvement over South Mountain. (For a detailed account of Blackford and his sharpshooters at Gettysburg, see “Taking Aim at Cemetery Hill” in the July issue of America’s Civil War)

After the battle Blackford covered the Confederate retreat, which led to another tactical innovation. Rodes put the young major in command of all five sharpshooter battalions of his division, which formed a sort of “demi-brigade” nearly a thousand strong to act as the army’s rear guard.

Although slow to pursue the Rebels, Meade attempted to cut off the Lee’s retreat at Manassas Gap (near Front Royal, Virginia). When General William French’s III Corps pressed the lone Confederate brigade defending the gap, Rodes threw Blackford’s sharpshooters in on the Union flank. “So near were we that every shot took effect,” he wrote, “and having perfect protection ourselves, we enjoyed the fun highly – losing only three men.” Their deadly accurate fire, plus some artillery, soon forced French’s men to withdraw.

Impressed by the success of Rodes’ concept, General Lee ordered every infantry brigade in the Army of Northern Virginia to organize its own sharpshooter battalion in early 1864. Like everything else in the Confederate army, their organization varied somewhat. While everyone used the four-men-per-company, forty-per-regiment scheme, Rodes’ sharpshooters seem to have stuck with their five company arrangement, while some other battalions used three companies and others four. All used buglers for communications. After the war General Cadmus Wilcox modestly took credit for the whole idea, and does seem to have translated a French manual on skirmish tactics. Rodes, however, had already implemented the concept a full year before.

Meanwhile Rodes continued to refine the sharpshooters’ tactical doctrine and organization. He combined the four sharpshooter battalions of his division into a permanent organization, the Division Sharpshooters, under Major Blackford. This gave him the option of using his sharpshooters as a separate “demi-brigade,” under his direct command. Rodes put Blackford in charge of the training. “These drills attracted much attention,” wrote Blackford, “and every morning there was a crowd of officers looking on.” After tactics and drilling they began marksmanship practice. “A thousand or more of them were banging away for hours, until my head would ache from the noise and smell of the saltpetre. This went on daily until the opening of the campaign.”

Since the Army of Northern Virginia typically fielded around thirty-six infantry brigades, and each brigade had a sharpshooter battalion of some 200 men, this meant that the Confederates now had a corps of over 7000 picked men trained in marksmanship and skirmish tactics available for the spring campaign in 1864. The new battalions soon proved their worth in the Overland campaign, which one sharpshooter characterized as “an endless picket fight.” They made ideal scouts, advance and rear guards for the brigade or division, and could be readily used as a flank guard as well. When the lines stabilized, the sharpshooters pushed forward into a line of shallow rifle pits as close to the enemy line as possible. Some outfits kept the sharpshooters on line for two or three days at a time, then gave them a day of rest while regular infantry took their places. Others put the sharpshooters in line during the day and replaced them with infantry pickets at night. “The battalion was now the very lightest of light troops in every particular,” said one. “They carried absolutely nothing save their arms and haversacks. The last were of but little use. The sharpshooters found it much less burdensome to make a raid for supplies on the line of the enemy than to carry a knapsack.”

At Spotsylvania the Confederate sharpshooters, complained one Yankee, “commanded completely the position of our line of battle.” They remorselessly tormented the men in the trenches, causing them, as one man quipped, “to spread ourselves on the ground as thin as the butter on a slice of boarding-house bread.” The Federals tried to push out their own line of rifle pits as far as possible to reduce their effectiveness, but this gave little respite from the hissing bullets.

The Rebels also introduced another unpleasant wrinkle – a small number of men in each battalion now carried the formidable Whitworth rifle. This state of the art weapon, some models of which sported telescopic sights, was said to be able to bring down a man at 1200 yards. As an added bonus, they were no heavier than a service musket. Commanders often gave the Whitworth sharpshooters (the term sniper did not come into use until well after the Civil War) “roving commissions” on the battlefield, allowing them to pick targets of opportunity. Frequently they got their orders directly from division headquarters. One of them picked off Union General John Sedgwick at Spotsylvania (the unfortunate general’s last words were “they couldn’t hit an elephant at this distance”).

The organic sharpshooter battalions gave the Confederates a degree of tactical flexibility that the Federals simply could not match. The bluecoats suffered from all the organizational problems that the Confederates had already identified, and although they did have their own excellent sharpshooters, these were separate units that had to be dispersed along the line when the army halted, then reconcentrated and moved separately when the battlefield shifted. The Federals tried attaching company-sized sharpshooter units to infantry regiments and brigades, but these were often misused as ordinary infantry by commanders who had no idea of their proper employment. Although some Union sharpshooter units like Berdan’s carried the very effective breech-loading Sharps, others struggled along with heavy civilian target rifles that greatly restricted their mobility. Every Confederate brigade, on the other hand, had a readily-available body of crack shots who were trained in skirmish tactics. All they need do was fall in. In the more or less continuous conflict of the Overland Campaign, they consistently outfought the Yankees at the skirmish line.

Probably the best example of what the sharpshooters could do was the struggle at Doswell House on May 24^th, 1864. As Lee’s army dug in on the North Anna River, General Winfield Scott Hancock’s II Corps advanced through dense woods toward Confederate positions near Hanover Junction. As they approached, Colonel Thomas Smyth’s brigade pushed forward to clear away Rebel skirmishers and find their main line. Smyth’s two lead regiments, however, encountered withering long range fire from Colonel William Cox’s North Carolina sharpshooters, part of Robert Rodes’ division. Smyth brought up another regiment but the Tarheel riflemen, crouched in rifle pits at the edge of the woods, refused to budge until finally charged with cold steel by a fourth regiment.

Smyth followed them into the dense woods, but meanwhile Colonel Bryan Grimes’ North Carolina sharpshooters had reinforced Cox’s men. About five hundred yards into the forest, Smyth was again stopped dead by heavy, accurate rifle fire. When he called for reinforcements, his commander, General John Gibbon, committed his entire division. Rodes responded by sending up the sharpshooter battalions of Doles’ Georgia brigade and those of Battle’s Alabama brigade—Blackford’s men—who began to work their way around the Union left flank. The thin gray line, backed by two artillery pieces, amounted to no more than 800 men in hastily-dug rifle pits, but once again they fought the Yankees to a standstill.

Smyth finally got his attack rolling again late that afternoon. He captured a section of North Carolina rifle pits, only to lose most of it to a fierce counterattack when the Confederates fed in more men from their main line. As a drenching thunderstorm soaked the darkening woods, a savage close-quarter battle broke out, with the Federals (who thought they had captured the main Confederate line) barely managing to hang on to their gains.

It had been quite a battle. Far from being brushed aside, Rodes’ “skirmishers” had stopped a reinforced Yankee division pretty much on their own. “We drove them with considerable slaughter, losing but few,” exulted Colonel Grimes. The sharpshooters continued their work as Grant shifted south toward Cold Harbor, playing a significant part in that battle on June 2^nd and 3^rd. Shortly after that, however, the situation in Virginia changed abruptly. While most of the Army of Northern Virginia ended up trench-bound at Petersburg, the Second Corps – including Rodes’ division – was on its way to the Shenandoah.

The 1864 Valley campaign developed into a war of feint and maneuver as Jubal Early tried  to substitute bluff and movement for numbers – one in which the sharpshooters were very much in their element. In a hundred different skirmishes up and down the Valley they repeatedly demonstrated their grit and tenacity. Indeed, it was the sharpshooters who, except for the big battles like Winchester and Cedar Creek, did most of the actual fighting. Early often employed them as “foot cavalry” to compensate for his notoriously unreliable mounted men, and as the example at the beginning of this article shows, they also saw service as assault troops.

After clearing the Valley of Federals, Old Jube crossed the Potomac and marched on Washington itself. On July 9^th, 1864, he met a defending Union army under Lew Wallace at Monocacy. Blackford and his sharpshooters lit into the Yankees on the National Pike to Baltimore, taking on a hurriedly-raised scratch force of 2,500 men under Brigadier General Erastus Tyler. When the smoke cleared, Tyler’s men were streaming eastward, leaving 83 dead and 236 wounded and missing. Blackford’s losses were light, and Rodes did not bother to engage his infantry brigades. When Early’s army reached Washington a few days later, it was Blackford and his men who began probing the defenses of Fort Stevens on the outskirts of the city. They easily pushed back the inexperienced Yankee skirmishers, and by mid-afternoon on July 11^th were almost inside the fort. Only the timely arrival of Union reinforcements prevented its fall and forced the Confederates to withdraw. During the retreat Early put an unemployed colonel, Hamilton Brown, in command of Rodes’ division sharpshooters. Brown’s regiment, the 1^st North Carolina, had virtually ceased to exist at Spotsylvania. The remnants had been consolidated with another regiment and transferred to Cox’s North Carolina brigade of Rodes’ division.

Meanwhile the brigades in the Petersburg trenches had found new uses for their sharpshooters. In addition to their normal duties as scouts, pickets, and sharpshooters, they also performed special intelligence missions. The commander of Lane’s brigade sharpshooters, Major T. J. Wooten, became well known for his technique of “seine-hauling” Yankee prisoners. “He would steal up to the enemy’s skirmish line,” wrote a contemporary, “sometimes crawl until within easy running distance then dash forward, halt on the line of pits, and just as the rear of his command passed him he would order both ranks to face outward and wheel, and they, coming back in single ranks and at a run, would capture everything before them and not fire a gun. In all of his dashes he never lost a man, killed, wounded or captured.”

When General John Gordon needed a force to storm Fort Stedman and its supporting batteries on March 25^th, 1865, Colonel Brown and his Division Sharpshooters got the nod. Infiltrating across no man’s land, Brown and his men took the fort by surprise with unloaded muskets, then held it against fierce Union counterattacks, capturing the Federal general N. B. McLaughlin in the process. When this last Confederate offensive failed, the sharpshooters remained as a rear guard, and Brown and most of his men were captured in Fort Stedman. The remnants of the sharpshooters helped cover the army’s retreat to Appomattox, and were once again in the advance when Grimes’ division made the last attack of the Army of Northern Virginia.

Yet for all their effectiveness, the collective memory of the war virtually ignored the sharpshooters. Men tended to write about famous individuals, their own regiments, or the great battles rather than about composite units. When ex-Confederate major W.S. Dunlop finally did write a book about the sharpshooters in 1899 he subtitled it “a story of Southern Valor that has never been told.” Still, while they may have been forgotten in their own country, the tactics the sharpshooters had pioneered remained valid. The widespread adoption of long-range repeating rifles in the late 19^th Century spelled the end of the close-packed line of battle and the adoption of the “open order” — essentially a skirmish line. At the century’s turn the Boers gave the British a bloody lesson in effectiveness of riflemen, and in WWI the Germans fielded special units for trench warfare. These “shock troops” (stosstruppen) consisted of a “storm” battalion in each infantry regiment especially trained in marksmanship, infiltration, and light infantry tactics. The men were volunteers drawn from across the regiment, and only the best were accepted. These elite units, which nearly turned the tide for Germany late in the war, looked a lot like the sharpshooter battalions that Robert Rodes and Eugene Blackford had organized fifty-five years earlier.

Copyright Fred L. Ray 2002

All rights reserved

Further reading:

First-hand accounts by Confederate sharpshooters:

Adams, Charles R., ed. A Post of Honor: The Pryor Letters, 1861-1863; Letters From Capt. S. G. Pryor, Twelfth Georgia Regiment and His Wife, Penelope Tyson Pryor. Fort Valley, GA: Garret Publications, 1989.

Benson, Susan W., ed. Berry Benson’s Civil War Book: Memoirs of a Confederate Scout and Sharpshooter. University of Georgia Press 1991.

Bryan, Mary Givens, ed. Letters of a Private in the Confederate Army: Jack Felder. Bound volume in Georgia Dept. of Archives and History, July 1951.

Chappell, Frank Anderson, ed. Dear Sister: Civil War Letters to a Sister in Alabama. Huntsville, AL: Branch Springs, 2002.

Dunlop, W. S. Lee’s Sharpshooters or The Forefront of Battle: A Story of Southern Valor That Never Has Been Told. 1899, reprinted by Morningside Publishing Company 1982, 2000.

Leon, Louis. Diary of a Tarheel Confederate Soldier. Charlotte, NC: Stone Publishing, 1913.

Lowe, Jeffrey C. and Sam Hodges, eds. Letters to Amanda: The Civil War Letters of Marion Hill Fitzpatrick, Army of Northern Virginia. Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 1998.

Montgomery, George F. Jr., ed. Georgia Sharpshooter: The Civil War Diary and Letters of William Rhadamanthus Montgomery, 1839-1906. Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 1997.

Parramore, Thomas and F. Roy Johnson. Before the Rebel Flag Fell. Murfreesboro, NC: Johnson Publishing, 1965.

Wood, Anthony. Reminiscences of the 35th GA. Regt. As Seen By A Sharphooter At The Front. Conyers, GA: Privately published, n.d. (Available $12 postpaid from Anthony Wood, 755 Green Street NE, Conyers, Ga 30012.)

Articles:

“Arkansas Sharpshooters at Vicksburg” Confederate Veteran XII (1904)

Barrier, J. D. “Breaking Grant’s Line” Confederate Veteran XXXIII (1925)

Benson, Berry “How General Sedgwick Was Killed” Confederate Veteran XXVI (1918)

Day, W. A. “Life Among Bullets—In The Rifle Pits” Confederate Veteran XXIX (1921)

“Fort Steadman’s Fall,” Confederate Veteran XXII (1914)

Herring, Marcus “General Rodes at Winchester” Confederate Veteran XXXVIII (1920)

Herring, Marcus “Gen. Robert E. Rodes” Confederate Veteran XXIV (1926)

Kaigler, William “Concerning Last Charge at Appomattox” Confederate Veteran VI (1898)

“Lane’s Corps of Sharpshooters” SHSP XXVIII (1900)

Laughton, John E. “The Sharpshooters Of Mahone’s Brigade” SHSP XXII (1894)

Manson, H. W.  “Story From the Ranks” Confederate Veteran I (1893)

Minnich, J. W. “Famous Rifles” Confederate Veteran XXX (1922)

Minnich, J. W. “That Affair at Dandridge, Tenn.” Confederate Veteran XXX (1922)

Roberts, Frank Stovall “Spring Hill – Franklin – Nashville, 1864” Confederate Veteran XXVII (1919)

Shannon, Isaac N. “Sharpshooters with Hood’s Army” Confederate Veteran XV (1907)

W.R.S. “The Sharpshooters Of Mahone’s Old Brigade At The Crater” SHSP XXVIII (1900)

Young, John D. “A Campaign with the Sharpshooters” Philadelphia Weekly Times January 26^th, 1878.

First-hand accounts by Union Sharpshooters

Hastings, William H., ed. Letters from a Sharpshooter: The Civil War Letters of William B. Greene, Co. G, Berdan’s Sharpshooters. Belleville, WI: Historic Publications, 1993.

Ripley, William Y. W. A History of Company F, First United States Sharp Shooters. Rutland, VT: Tuttle & Co., Printers, 1883.

Stevens, C. A. Berdan’s U.S. Sharpshooters in the Army of the Potomac, 1861-1865. St. Paul, MN: Price-McGill, 1892.

White, Russell C., ed. The Civil War Diary of Wyman S. White, First Sergeant of Company F, 2^nd United States Sharpshooter Regiment, 1861-1865. Baltimore: Butternut and Blue, 1993.

Murray, R. L. Letters From Berdan's Sharpshooters. Wolcott, NY: Benedum Books 2005.

Contemporary sources on sharpshooting weapons and tactics.

Bilby, Joseph G., Civil War Firearms: Their Historical Background, Tactical Use and Modern Collecting and Shooting. Combined Books 1997

Coates, Earl J., and Dean S. Thomas. An Introduction to Civil War Small Arms. Gettysburg, PA: Thomas Publications, 1990.

Edwards, William B. Civil War Guns. Gettysburg, PA: Thomas Publications, 1962.

Hesketh-Prichard, H. Sniping in France: With Notes on the Scientific Training of Scouts, Observers, and Snipers. New York: E. P. Dutton, 1920. Reprint, Mt. Ida, Arkansas: Lancer Militaria, 1993.

Sword, Wiley. Firepower from Abroad: The Confederate Enfield and the Lemat Revolver. Lincoln, RI: Andrew Mowbray, 1986.

Gourley, Scott. “United States Marines Antiterrorism Force: Special Weapons and Tactics of This New Elite Brigade.”

Popenker, Max. “Modern Sniper Rifles.”

Secondary Sources:

Katcher, Philip. Sharpshooters of the American Civil War. Osprey Publishing, 2002.

Morrow, John Anderson. The Confederate Whitworth Sharpshooters. 1989. 2^nd edition. N.p.: Privately published, 2002.

Sword, Wiley. Sharpshooter: Hiram Berdan, His Famous Sharpshooters and Their Sharps Rifles. Lincoln, RI: Andrew Mowbray, 1988.

Sauers, Richard A. “Colonel Hiram Berdan and the 1^st United States Sharpshooters” Susquehanna University Studies Vol. XII No. 1 (1983)

Howerton, Bryan R. "Rapley’s Sharpshooters (12th Arkansas Battalion, CSA )"

Robert Henderson, “Canadian Fencible Light Company at the Battle of the Chateauguay, 1813.”