The Metcalf Legend

Among the many stories of the sharpshooters’ exploits, none stands out more than the vaunted accomplishment of Captain John H. Metcalf, who is said to have killed a Confederate general with a picket ball rifle at the enormous distance of one mile, 187 feet range. That no “Captain John H. Metcalf III” existed, or that the one Captain Metcalf of some distinction to be found in the Official Records was not a sharpshooter

Left side of full stock Whitworth shows slightly different scope but position is same as on Battle Abbey Confederate specimen. Long eye-relief tube was located so because rifle was shot from “back position,” with muzzle balanced between shooter’s crossed feet and butt near cheek, lying on one’s back. Rifle shown, in N.R.A. (British) museum, has Enfield-type rear sight.

and did not earn his honors as a rifleman, seems not to have worried latter-day reteUers of this fabulous story. In True Magazine for January, 1961, Robert M. Debevic tells dramatically of the “Mile-Long Shot To Kill.” To sum up the incidents it will be enough to briefly give the conclusion of Debevic’s essay:
“It was during the Red River Campaign in Louisiana that Metcalf got his chance . . . The fateful morning had come. He blinked his eyes wearily. The preparations had been a strain, but this waiting at dawn was worse. Where was that Rebel general?
“Metcalf blinked again. The tent fly had suddenly opened. He tensed as a man, in the distinctive field uniform of a Confederate general, stepped out of the distant tent into the morning sunlight. The general looked up at the sky. He was bearded and gray. He was smiling.
“Metcalf felt a great emptiness at the pit of his stomach.
“He touched his finger gently to the cold, curved steel of the trigger—and slowly squeezed. The super load of black powder roared and echoed in the hills.
“A lieutenant pressed the button on his stopwatch (sic!) and counted nervously: ‘. . . three . . . four . . . fi . . .’
“Metcalf watched fascinated as the general spun around, fell to the ground, tried to rise and then fell flat on his back. Amazed officers and men rushed to his side.

“Capt. John Metcalf allowed the great weariness he’d been fighting off so long to settle over him as he watched the Northern army break from cover and swarm across the valley. The victory was quick and overwhelming. The commendation which was issued shortly afterwards read: ‘To Captain John T. Metcalf for coolness and courage in the Red River Campaign, Louisiana, April, 1864.’”

While Debevic does a creditable job of evoking the image of the scene before our eyes, he is quite weak on history and even weaker on gun knowledge, though he does “draw the long bow” very well. His essay is a mixed-up rewrite of a fiction piece by Charles Winthrop Sawyer, noted arms writer of yesteryear. Sawyer’s essay does not make any claim to truth, but merely to a slight confusion which is a common if unpardonable trick in a work of otherwise historical fact: his book, Our Rifles.
On page 89 Sawyer describes “No. 3, Heavy Target Rifle. A scientist’s instrument, rather than a mere rifle. It was not held in the hands when fired, but lay on a bench or stout table, supported, at the forward end, by the steel bracket, or foot, shown; and at the rear by the set screw beneath the breech resting on an inclined plane of metal; or by an apparatus which was capable of vertical and horizontal adjustment secured beneath the breech by means of the set-screw and the adjacent steel dowel. The shooter sat behind the rifle and a little to one side; and could put either shoulder to the butt, because the stock has a cheek piece on either side. The recoil, however, was not severe. Its weight is thirty-seven pounds; its caliber about .68; its rifling has six ratchet grooves; the pitch is of the gain twist variety, beginning at the breech with one turn in 5 feet and ending with one turn in 3 feet. The owner had at least a dozen different bullet moulds casting a great variety of elongated bullets, cannelured and smooth, long and short for, and not for, use with patch; and also the hollow base variety such as the Army used in the rifle musket . The telescope, of about 25 power, is so light and has such a large field that it rivals a best modern one (ca. 1920: Ed.). The scale on its mountings, which are adjustable both vertically and horizontally, reads in minutes of angle. The barrel is marked ‘Abe Williams, Maker.’ On an ornamental insert in the top of the butt is engraved Little George Lainhart. On the left side of the stock are two gold hearts, close together . . .”
Sawyer saw in this handsome rifle, an arm which actually existed and which he illustrates by photo, quite a romance. He tied its Civil War use, as he imagined it, in with a romantic narrative which he had already published in an earlier journal, the history of John Metcalf, Old-Time American Rifleman. Sawyer recreated in his fictional John Metcalf an archetypical American frontiersman, user of the Kentucky Long Rifle and moulder of our historic destinies in the 1770’s. The entire purpose of his essay is summed up in its opening sentence: “In times of long ago, in the settlement of Wayback, somewhere in New England, there lived a young man whose skill with firearms had wide renown . . His choice of “Wayback” as the name of the settlement reveals the purpose of the story; it is pure fiction.
In carrying the narrative of “Metcalf” forward in time, Sawyer jumps a generation, lands on “John Metcalf 3rd, graduate of West Point, officer and gentleman, who was a better specimen of man than his grandfather.” Says Sawyer in preamble, “Thus John 3rd was able to use mind and knowledge in a way impossible to his ancestor; and with a special weapon of (t)his

Use of the “heavies,” the 30-40 pound bench-rest rifles, was reserved to the best and coolest shots who acted independently of the Regiment. Here in a sequence of photos cool and independent shooter John T. Amber, editor of Gun Digest, reenacts loading and sighting of a “heavy.”

False muzzle is put on, to protect end of rifling from ramrod wear and deliver bullet from muzzle with greatest precision, Thumb-blade is to obscure vision through scope when muzzle piece is installed so accidental shot will not throw it down range and damage rifle.

later period, he was able to perform a feat hitherto unparalleled and even on a par with the best that we, his descendants, find to be about our limit.”

Bond paper carefully cut into strips with diagonal ends is used to patch long slug; shorter sugar-loaf “picket ball” is often seated into cross-patch or ordinary round patch. Some “heavies” were same caliber as U.S. Rifle, and used common grease-grooved minie ball at rifleman’s option.

Sawyer, knowing of the existence of the real heavy match or accuracy test rifle marked “Little George Lainhart,” has one of his characters of the same name; the Confederate general, specifically. His story is substantially as True’s writer Debevic has retold it. In the Official Records, Debevic finds not denial, but substantiation, for the Sawyer fiction. Locating a Captain John T. Metcalf in the O.R., Debevic ignores the fact that such a famous general as “Little George Lainhart” is not listed, simply because he is a figment of Sawyer’s imagination. Nor does Debevic care to examine the Heitman’s Register of Officers of the United States Army and Navy, 1776-1876, to discover the name Metcalf appears, but not one John Metcalf III. Instead, substance is given, erroneously, to the legend by discovering that attached to the staff of Brigadier General Jas. W. McMillan in the Red River Campaign was a Metcalf; McMillan’s report (OR I, XXXIV, Part 1, page 419) refers to Metcalf and also to a Captain Lynch:
. . My staff did their duty well, and I cannot in justice omit to mention Capt. J. A. Lynch, 26th Massachusetts, and acting assistant inspector-general, and John T. Metcalf, my volunteer aide, for coolness and courage displayed in the discharge of their duties . .
McMillan does not single Metcalf out for any special mention in token of his extra-duty accomplishment of the long range rifle shot, an incident which would have made history as, according to both Sawyer and Debevic, it turned the tide of battle and broke a stalemate. Instead, it is Lynch who is mentioned in some detail as to accomplishment: “I also beg leave to state, for the information of the Brigadier General commanding, that he owes much to Captain Lynch’s persistent bravery in getting the battery into position, that finally, by a few well-directed shots, expelled the Rebels from the ford.”
It was in fact artillery under Captain Lynch and not rifle shooting by Metcalf, that dislodged the enemy facing the Yankees in this incident at Pleasant Hill.

Next, powder is carefully measured and poured in. Flask could throw charge directly but greatest precision is gained by using funnel. Some funnels had long tubes to place powder carefully at breech, avoiding loss of weight from individual grains adhering to bore.

Bullet seater fits over end of false muzzle and movable center plunger guides bullet into bore. Rifling in false muzzle is cut a little loose to allow patched bullet to center itself.

Aligned, smart blow with palm starts bullet evenly and centrally in bore. Concentricity of bullet in bore gives maximum accuracy because influence of air resistance does not tend to deflect it as it screws evenly through the air. Eccentric motion would develop increasing spiral motion on way to target.

Aside from the odd history of this anecdote, which since the True publication is sure to crop up again and again in increasingly authoritative publications about the War, what was there about the big rifles which created such a legend?
These big scope rifles were called “the heavies” among the Sharpshooters. The heaviest one in the 1st Regiment U.S. Sharpshooters was carried by James Heath of Michigan. It weighed 34 pounds. “The giving of these telescope rifles, but few of which were now carried,” writes Stephens, “at this period of our service, was in the nature of a mark of honor. The sharpshooter thus armed was considered an independent character, used only for special service, with the privilege of going to any part of the line where in his own judgment he could do the most good. It is therefore sufficient, in naming the men who carried these ponderous rifles, to show that they were among our most trusty soldiers and best shots.” Evidently Private Heath did not have the “Abe Williams” rifle of Little George Lainhart. There is an Abraham Williams listed as a general gunsmith at Covington, Kentucky, about 1845, but the finish and style of the rifle Sawyer pictures suggests it was made by Abe Williams, Owego, New York, in the late 1850’s. The gun and bullets used have been pictured, and the one which is “such as the kind

used in the rifle musket” is shown. This appears identical with the .58 regulation bullet, and since many of the sniper rifles made for the Army were in the .58 caliber, to use standard issue ammunition as well as special bullets cast from moulds for each gun, there is a strong suspicion that Mr. Sawyer’s .68 caliber is a typographical error. Such a caliber would be an unusually large caliber for a match rifle of this kind.
The bullet used is important. A long, heavy bullet which had a considerable cylindrical section at the base is called a “slug.” Rifles known as “slug guns” are not thought of as common until some years after the War. The usual match rifle projectile was the “picket” bullet, a pointed bullet with only a slight bearing surface at the base. While accurate at a fair range, the expectation of hitting a man target at over one mile range is quite doubtful. The Whitworth rifles, true slug guns, and far in advance of their time in 1860, could not shoot with any degree of precision at such formidable ranges.