Influence of President Lincoln

President Lincoln himself was directly responsible for the Sharpshooters’ rifles. At “Camp Instruction” near Washington one day Colonel Berdan and the regiment were treated to a visit by President Lincoln, General McClellan, and Assistant Secretary of War Colonel Thomas A. Scott.
Berdan turned out the men to show what they could do. A target, representing two Zouaves painted on canvas, was set up at 600 yards. One hundred men with their heavy target rifles were placed in a pit, where each fired one shot. When the bullet holes were counted, it was found that each shot had struck within the outlines of the figures. Lincoln fired three shots from a “globe rifle” belonging to H. J. Peck of Company F. The rifle was equipped with a round aperture-type front sight which circled the target, and had a post or bead sticking up from the bottom of the circle for a front sight. Lincoln proved entirely at ease with a rifle, and resting a gun across a tree he called out “Boys, this reminds me of old-time shooting.” The soldiers waved their hats and cheered.

The obvious favor of the President brought forth the jealousy which Assistant Secretary of War Thomas A. Scott had evidenced about Berdan’s whole operation. Scott, echoing the attitude of Ripley, the Ordnance chief, didn’t like this kind of special service troop set-up. He asked Berdan in an impudent, sarcastic manner, what he knew about guns and “that I should set up my opinion against all these officials, and ended by challenging me to fire, thinking doubtless I would decline or, if I accepted, to get the laugh on me by making a bad shot.” Berdan, however, was as skilled with a rifle as any man in the regiment, and luckier than most. At 600 yards a man-target was set up, with the words “Jeff Davis” painted above its head. Lincoln laughed at the idea. “Colonel,” the President said, “If you make a good shot it will serve him right.”
The target was set up and Berdan called for the sergeant major’s rifle which he knew to be sighted in for the range. Baited by Scott, who prevented Berdan from assuming the natural prone position for such shooting, the colonel stepped to the line and brought the gun to his cheek. “What point are you going to fire at?” queried Scott. “The head,” Berdan replied. “Fire at the right eye,” Scott shouted, doing his best to rattle the marksman. Berdan fired, and the heavy Morgan James scope-sighted rifle bounced with the recoil. In all, the colonel fired three times, calling his shots each time. When the target was brought in, the shots were in the places he had called—head, right breast, left thigh. Incredible to relate, the head shot cut Davis’s right eye, and knocked the pupil clean out. “No man knew better than President Lincoln how to turn what he knew to be an accident to good account,” related Berdan later. “He began to laugh and kept on laughing until he got into his carriage and then said: ‘Colonel, come down tomorrow, and I will give you the order for the breechloaders’.”
It is not clear exactly what kind of “breechloaders” Lincoln spoke of. The visit to Camp Instruction was very likely not an expression of the President’s general interest in firearms—he was a pretty busy man to spend a day at the range—but was the result of conflict within the War Department which he alone could reconcile.