Tag: sharpshooters

  • An Infantry Assault

    I came across this reminiscence of an infantry attack and thought I’d post it as it’s one of the best descriptions I’ve seen not only of the tactics but of the feelings of the men making it. The attack appears to be part of the battle of Hatcher’s Run (5-7 February, 1865). I’ve been unable […]

  • Modest Heroes

    Eric Wittenberg has a couple of posts on David F. Day, a brave man who won a Medal of Honor but who had an unfortunate habit of boasting about himself and shamelessly embellishing his deeds. The Southern equivalent would be Lamar Fontaine, who I will write about at some point, and of course Hiram Berdan. […]

  • John West—Hero or Blowhard?

    Every war produces heroes, but also a number of blowhards, who somehow always seem to outnumber the heroes. Sometimes it’s hard to tell who’s who. One such case is John West, who claimed to be a “noted sharpshooter” in Virginia armed with a Whitworth rifle. I first ran across West’s account in John Morrow’s The […]

  • Rifles against artillery

    Bill Adams sent me an interesting graphic he scanned from a period book and has agreed to let me post it. Widely published and commented on the time, it shows the results of a test conducted at the British musketry school at Hythe in the mid-1850s. Thirty riflemen who did not know the distances involved […]

  • Who Killed Uncle John (and John Reynolds)?

    A popular activity for the Civil War buff is trying to figure out who killed certain generals. To help I have posted my article “The Killing of Uncle John” that originally in Civil War Times in June 2006. In it I look at the contemporary and eyewitness accounts of the death of Major General John […]

  • Sharpshooters in Action

    While looking through Francis A. Walker’s Second Army Corps in the Army of the Potomac I came across this passage, which describes the fighting between Heth’s division and Hancock’s Second Corps at the Battle of Boydton Plank Road: It may be interesting to pass to the Confederate side and see how the operations of the […]

  • 1st New York Sharpshooters

    Ran across a privately published book about the shadowy 1st New York Sharpshooters. I’ve come across references to this unit but was unable to come with much information about it. Now John Bennett has done it for me, tracking down the sometimes tangled history of this unit in the first book about it. Originally intended […]