Marksmanship

[Gary of CA]

I was once asked which side had better marksmen.  If you read some of the Southern papers like the Richmond Daily Dispatch, you'll find numerous early war stories boasting of Southern skill with rifles.  Similarly, you'll find articles boasting of Northern marksmanship in their papers.  Witness the Harper Ferry's illustrations and stories of Hiram Berdan.   Supporting the Southern belief is that the New England factory workers or storekeepers or clerks were unaccustomed to handling firearms.  Having a more rural lifestyle, the Southerner was more adept with firearms-so the legend goes.

In my own research, I found that marksmanship, while not universal to all men, may be found in men both North & South and was not an exclusive trait peculiar to one side.  New England produced several companies of sharpshooters & Berdan's Sharp Shooters were drawn from numerous states.  There were also numerous independent companies or battalions.  The Midwest also produced many men who were farm bred and raised-just like their counterparts in grey.  While many were not organized into specialized units and fought as common infantrymen, they were as adept in skirmishing, stalking and shooting.

So, which side was better?  I can't say.

[ole]

Agreed, Gary. There is no way one can say that the southron had better marksmen than the damned Yankee. We forget that the accursed noreasterner had many more woodsmen from New Hampshire, Vermont and Maine than Boston. And did the guy from Wisconsin have less experience with a longarm than than the guy from Arkansas?

And are frontiersmen inherently better marksmen than the urbanites? Seems to me that a knack for shooting properly is just that: a knack. The actual practice of shooting or experience in shooting appears to be a bit mythogical.

I'm guessing that you, a recognized shooter, (albeit from breakfast-cereal country) did not grow up on the plains or in the woods garnering game to augment your diet. (Although I will acknowledge that you've had a bit more than a week to develop your marksmanship.) But I'll submit that you had it in you, from the beginning, a talent -- one that some on both sides shared back then.

My point is that one didn't necessarily gain a particular skill by being born in the traditionally "right" place. There is absolutely no reason an Ireland-born coal shoveller could not shoot as well as a Texan. Where were Berdan's boys from? (Didn't they include a number of eastern urbanites?)

Just trying to keep an interesting thread going.

ole

[Johan Steele]

I believe quite a few men in the war knew quite well how to shoot but it is another thing to be able to shoot a man and hope to kill him.  It's one thing to shoot a deer ot rabbit while hunting for food or to put holes in a paper target.  It's another thing entirely to shoot a man... especially when he's shooting back.  It is/was a mental hurdle.  At that first battle when learning first hand that men die, and horribly at that, sobers the adolescent killing urge brought on by glorious war stories.  Reality is very sobering indeed.

Some take to it, embrace it and go a little mad, enjoying the thrill of fear and rush of adreneline and soldiers tend to look at them as a bit touched in the head.

[leadhead]

Gary/Ole,

Interesting point. I have always considered the "Southerners were better shooters" an interesting debate. Granted, rural boys would be used to shooting varmints and probably exceed the skills of the average city urchin, but there were lots of rural areas on both sides of the Mason Dixon.

Good point about the number of Northern sharpshooters as well.

Another consideration, the great equalizer, the accuracy of the weapons of the day. While all the standard military weapons were great improvements over their predecessors, the primary requirements for a military weapon were ease of maintenance, reliability, weight and cost of production. At the Springfield and Harpers Ferry tests a grade of "serviceable" required what would be today considered minimal accuracy. Tactics still depended on mass fire of a line to do damage to an opponent and marksmanship was not deemed critical. Fine, accurate weapons existed, but the mainstream shoulder and side arms (and ammunition, some of which was so crude the soldier would have been equally effective loading his weapon with pebbles) were not conducive to sharpshooting.

Just a humble opinion,
TomH