Marksmanship in the Army

Confederate Veteran
Volume 4, Number 1, Pages 14-15
January 1896.

B. L. Ridley, Murfreesboro, Tenn., writes: I want to ask old veterans about the best shots they saw or heard in our great war. Let sharpshooters, musketeers, cannoneers, all tell of some of the shots worth reading about. Shots that now and then turned the tide of battle perhaps. It is stated that the Texas Rangers could knock out an eye from on or under his horse. Quantrell's men, they say, could cut a ribbon or strike a keyhole on a dead run. They used to entertain themselves shooting at doorknobs on entering a hamlet or town. Champ Ferguson's Company of Confederate Bushwhackers could place a ball at any given point, and his antagonists, Tinker Dave Beatty's Company, were cracksmen of the mountains equally good. How was it with the old squirrel hunters of the armies? Bogardus is said to be the crack shot of today at close distance in civil life, but I want the Veteran to have in its pages, for the future historian, some examples of the marksmanship of soldiers in action, who had no improved weapons, but who learned to use an old musket with the skill of a "Wild Bill," and the unerring aim of a Boone. Instances speak more forcibly of the perfection attained in this art than anything else. Here is one related of Porter's Battery at Fort Donelson: A sharpshooter, about three fourths of a mile off on the Federal side, had climbed midway a large tree and was picking off Porter's gunners. A six pounder was aimed at him and he fell to the ground dead. At Belmont, Maj. Stewart (afterwards Lieut. Gen. A.P. Stewart), who commanded the forts and water batteries, directed the famous gun, known on the Southern side as "The Lady Polk," at a column headed by a horseman, who afterwards turned out to be General Grant. These shots turned the tide of that battle, and caused the Federals to retreat to their gunboats.

At Rocky Face Ridge, near Dalton, John King of the Twentieth Tennessee Regiment, raised his telescope to his Whitworth, and dismounted an officer commanding a skirmish line a mile away. Generals Johnston and Stewart estimated the distance for him and saw the shot. It is said that Captain Anderson, of Quantrell's men, would, in a charge, take his bridle reins in his mouth and use his pistols in both hands, to perfection. They claim for him such coolness under fire that he could strike any button on a man's coat that he wanted to. At Adairsville, two Yanks behind a tree got one of our skirmishers in a similar position. When his body by his movements would appear out from the center, they'd fire and shoot his coat sides, until that garment was in shreds. Notwithstanding this, that old soldier watched his chance, and finally, in an unguarded moment killed both, and coolly said: "Now, I reckon you'll quit your foolishness." At Resaca, Brown's Brigade displayed fine marksmanship over a disputed battery that both sides were trying to hold, but neither could get away. The Federals would raise a hat from behind their breastworks on a stick, and the Brigade would shoot it into atoms. On the march to Tennessee, a herd of frightened deer rushed through French's Division, several were killed while at full tilt, on the jump and run, although the Division was in panic with "Buck Ague." Some of John Morgan's boys could get a bird on the wing with pistols, and this was not uncommon with the Arkansas, Missouri and Texas soldiers.

In the First Tennessee Regiment at Shelbyville, in 1863, a target in the shape of a man was put up at 800 yards, and a medal was offered for the best five shots, Wm. Beasly, of Ledbetter's Company, put three shots out of the five in the target, any one of which would have proved fatal. He not only got the medal, but was detailed as one of the five in. his division to sharpshoot with a Whitworth. One of Ward's pickets, in John Morgan's Cavalry, near Monticello, Ky., one dark drizzly night heard an awful rustling in the leaves near him, he was in Tinker Dave Beatty's beat, and this sound raised the hair on his head. He hallooed out, "Who comes there?" There being no answer, he fired and fled. The next morning it was found that at this shot he had fired at the sound had pierced a hog through the heart, killing him "too dead to squeal." At New Hope Church, a Texas Brigade (Granbury's) rushed for a hill on our flank, they poured one volley into a Federal Brigade, which had just reached the crest, and their unerring aim, left seven hundred and seventy bodies on the field.

The secret of marksmanship is not in the practice alone, but in the perception and education as to distance. At Missionary Ridge and Lookout Mountain we found that we invariably overshot the enemy from high eminences, and that they in the valley overshot us. It takes judgment from position and experience as to the inflection and deflection of a ball from the force that propels it to perfect one in this science. One day near Kennesaw Mountain, the writer witnessed three Federal Batteries playing on one of ours, endeavoring to silence it. They shot down the horses, cut down the wheels of caissons and carriages, and were so expert in marksmanship that every gun but one was dismounted. The killing of Gen. Polk at Pine Mountain was an exhibition of marksmanship on the part of the Federals. At Stevenson, Ala., Gen. Forrest sighted a man on top of a stockade, half a mile off, he seemed to be so defiant, 'tis said that Forrest dismounted, got hold of one of Morton's pieces of artillery and took aim, he cut that man half in two. At Shiloh, the Twenty third Tennessee, in resisting a charge, poured a volley into the enemy. At this time there was a Major on horseback in hot pursuit, some distance ahead, although the whole of Captain J. A. Ridley's Company fired on him, yet one of the soldiers of said Company alone claimed to have killed him. The Company challenged his right. The soldier said: "If you find that the ball entered under the right arm pit, he's mine, if not, I'll give it up. " On investigation, the shot was found there. Abbe Hill, also a sharpshooter from the Twentieth Tennessee, made a fine shot at Decatur, Ala., in cutting a soldier down as he walked across a road 800 yards away. Also, Green, of Florida, from behind the same log killed a man 1,200 yards off. In the estimate, he had to consider the speed of his walk as well as distance.

At Ringgold Gap, the well directed shots of Cleburne's Division beat back and mowed down Sherman's Army and saved the Army of Tennessee. That was General Pat Cleburne's great fight, the Major General who was afterwards killed at Franklin, and who died the "death of honor in the arms of glory." At Bainbridge, the gunboats made a desperate attempt to strike Hood's pontoons and impede the crossing of the Army of Tennessee. Our land batteries knocked those gunboats into smithereens. During the siege of Vicksburg, one of the Yankee Signal Corps planted himself on a high stack chimney, and was signaling with his flag. Sam Rayburne, of Montserrat's Battery, got permission from the Captain to direct one shot at him, the distance being estimated at one mile. At the crack of his Napoleon, the ball knocked the chimney off eight or ten feet, and down came the Yank, brickbats and all.

Nor was our Naval Department behind. It is said in the engagement between the Confederate steamer Alabama and the Federal steamer Kearsarge that Admiral Semmes directed a shell to be placed in the most vulnerable place in the Kearsarge. It turned out afterwards that his gunner had done as directed, and if the shell had exploded, the Alabama would have added another star to her already brilliant crown of victory. The little Battering Ram Arkansas was the grandest achievement in the way of a gunboat that the world has ever witnessed, absolutely baffling an organized fleet. Neither Decatur in his feat of burning the Philadelphia on Tripolitan shores, in 1804, nor Capt. Richard Somers in his daredevil attempts to blow up the Tripolitan fleet, was more daring than Capt. Isaac Newton Brown, Commander of the Ram Arkansas, in his drive out of the mouth of the Yazoo, thirty miles to Vicksburg, to destroy Uncle Sam's Navy.

In a number of the Veteran, an article from some one states how effective the sharpshooters were in Lee's Army, but instances attract an old soldier, and a comparison between the old dead shots of the armies and the pretended headlights of today in that line, is the most interesting. Veritable facts during the war almost equal Munchausen's myths.

At Harrisburg, Mississippi, just after the battle Morton's Battery sighted a Yankee one and a quarter miles off, ascending a ladder from the roadside. Capt. Morton directed a gunner to pick him off. At the crack of the gun, the ladder and the fellow came down. It was discovered afterwards that he was prowling around a widow's corn crib. At Paris landing, before Johnsonville was destroyed a gunboat approaching, two guns of this same battery open fire. The boat in motion guns changing position. Boat over shooting and the guns striking in the broadside all the time until she handed in her checks.

At Nashville, Gen. Hood, Stephen D. Lee and a group of general officers were on Ridley Hill, two miles south of Fort Negley. A citizen warned us that they would attract a fire from Negley. By the time they moved down the hill a shell exploded on the spot that they had left. At Athens, after Campbell surrendered the fort of 1,800 men to Forrest (bluff game), a Dutchman commanding a block house filled full of negro soldiers refused to surrender to Morton's Battery. The first shot struck a porthole, killing a number. The second shot did likewise the third brought out the Dutchman with the white flag.