Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire American snipers, 1860's style

Thanks for these posts Birdman. Great read.

I took delivery of Berry Benson's Civil War Book: Memoirs of a Confederate Scout and Sharpshooter. Benson had a remarkable career in and after that war, and actually was sent to and escape Hellmira, the Union prison in Elmira NY. Only critique I have of the book is we get it through the filter of his grandson's wife, who first typed the manuscript after WWII from Benson's own written accounts. Heavily sanitized it seems, with little mention of the unpleasant despite the excrutiating physical ordeals Beson must have faced at different times and places.

Anyways, a passage describing Yankee vs. Southerner caught my eye, this from where Benson was in the early stages of Union captivity, being moved from the front, describing Yankee camp life....

Being marched thro' the camps I was continually hailed on all sides with "Hello, Johnny!", Johnny Reb being a national name they had given us. In being first thrown among them, I was surprised at the immense amount of cursing and blackguarding I heard going on everywhere.

There was nothing like it going on in our camps. I heard oaths that I had never before heard in my life and a man would, in mere sport, call a man the vilest names - a style of language that would have brought a fight on his hands in Confederate camps, fifty times a day.

The downside of Confederate politeness might have been a sort of hidebound reluctance at all levels to remove incompetents from command, especially in the western theater, coupled with a reluctance to promote those of obvious talent, such as Cleburne and Forrest.

Unfortunate for the Confederacy that this happened in the western theater where the likes of a General Grant soon became their principal opponent. Also unfortunate that in the west the Union fielded troops from the until-recently frontier Midwest.

Those boys were shooters, as good if not better than the Confederates themselves.

Birdwatcher

Time to inch this thread along a bit more...

I'm gonna quote some more from Hess's The Rifle Musket in Civil War Combat (2008) pertaining to the notable proficiency with rifles among the Mid-Western troops in the Union Army of the Tennessee.

According to Hess, accurate rifle fire by Union troops played a prominent role in many of the victories of that army, all the way from Fort Donelson through Sherman's March to the Sea. In contrast, there are many cases of soldiers in the Union Army of the Potomac back East who had scarcely used a firearm before seeing battle.

From the exception proving the rule department, at Gettysburg we have three instances where well-handled breech loading or repeating arms proved critical in determining the outcome.

Opening Day - Assorted cavalry carbines and Spencers in the hands of Buford's skirmishers stalling the initial Confederate advance on Gettysburg. Day Two - Fifteen Berdan Sharpshooters with Sharps rifles pouring fire into the Confederate flank and rear at Little Round Top and Day Three - Michigan Cavalry skirmishers with Spencers slowing Stuart's attempted strike at the Union rear in conjunction with Pickett's Charge.

Notable tho' that Berdan's outfit was composed of hand-picked marksmen, many from the West and that the Michigan Cavalry WERE from the Midwest.

p.54 The Chief of Ordinance later reported that four out of every five repeaters issued to the Union Army went to western troops, demonstrating the immense interest in the most advanced guns felt by young men from that region....

Many soldier did spend their own money to purchase the latest in killing tools, and most of them seem to have been Westerners... Whole regiments were armed with repeaters solely at the mens' expense... The men paid over three months salary, about $50 apiece, for the guns.....

Altogether, three Illinois regiments were armed with the Henry and five used the Spenser...

The most famous Union Army unit to use repeaters was Wilder's Lighting Brigade... Wilder was given command of a brigade of Indiana and Illinois regiments attached to the Army of the Cumberland. He received permission to convert his men to mounted infantry early in 1863 and spearheaded efforts to purchase Spencer repeaters for the whole brigade... Wilder raised a loan from bankers in his hometown of Greensburg, Indiana in exchange for nothing more than his personal note as collateral....

On the Confederate side, there was interest in repeaters but very little opportunity to use them. The South made none of its own, and about the only time a Rebel saw a repeater was in the hands of a Union captor or lying on the battlefield, dropped by a Union casualty.

The [Confederate] Army of the Tennessee reported having 49,193 guns in the middle of the Atlanta Campaign. Only 58 of them were Spenser rifles, all in the hands of troops riding with the cavalry.

Birdwatcher