The Sharpshooters at Gettysburg

Sharpshooter against sharpshooter should have meant a sniping match, with life instead of the Wimbleton Cup to the winner and death to the loser. But at the Devil’s Den at Gettysburg the Berdan Sharpshooters served as shock troops. A small force of Confederate riflemen, armed mainly with conventional but wellaimed rifle muskets, had settled themselves along the crest of the rocky knoll. Their sniping had been very annoying to the Union officers within range. But so well concealed were they, that rifle fire could not dislodge them. Sergeant Richard W. Tyler of Company K detailed 20 “volunteers” to help him take the position. They raced across the marsh, routed the Confederate pickets at the foot of the hill, and closed in, capturing 20 snipers. The Confederate sharpshooters were terrified because they believed that they would be hanged, but on learning that it was Berdan’s men which had taken them prisoner, their spirits changed from fear to complete happiness. Not one of the Union soldiers in this charge received a wound. They seemed to dodge through the fast flying Rebel bullets—one lost a frying pan, another caught a ball on his gun stock. But they accomplished their mission.

At Gettysburg the Sharpshooters are credited with having delayed Longstreet 40 minutes—a critical figure, since Longstreet claimed that if he had only been delayed 35 minutes, his corps would not have been repulsed. The green-clad riflemen frequently heard the cry “Sharpshooters to the front” and responded with speed which was typical more of the intense esprit de corps among the men rather than any unusual quality of bravery or daring. Only 100 of Berdan’s men were engaged in what proved to be a delaying action of a handful against 30,000.
About 11:30 a.m. on July 2, prior to Longstreet’s flank march, General Bimey ordered Berdan to take 100 Sharpshooters and, accompanied by 200 musketarmed infantrymen of the 3rd Maine, reconnoiter the Confederate right flank. Part of Anderson’s division was approaching Pitzer’s Wood, to the west of the Emmitsburg road, which was in front of the Union lines stretching from Little Round Top, where Birney’s division held the left of the Union line. The Sharpshooters moved off across the Emmitsburg road and deployed through a peach orchard to the northwest, past some farm buildings. A young boy Warned the green-coated marksmen that they should “Look out! there are lots of Rebels in there, in rows,” pointing towards the woods.
The soldiers did not believe the young boy, thinking he knew little of fighting. The Sharpshooters suddenly discovered that the lad had made the understatement of the day; they discovered three columns of infantry on the rear edge of the woods, the west slope of Seminary Ridge near Pitzer’s Run. Berdan sent Captain Briscoe to Warn Bimey and Sickles; then, in command of hardly three companies of men against regiments, gave the order to “advance firing.” The Sharpshooters attacked the enemy on the flank, piling them up and creating confusion, “doing great execution with their reliable breechloaders—catching it hot meanwhile from the volleys received.” Berdan’s line held back a regiment in a “bold and audacious venture,” as their generals said. The green coats were pressed hard by the enemy and eventually retired, but in complete command of the situation, not in retreat. Colonel M. B. Lakeman of the 3rd Maine reported that “The enemy showed himself in overwhelming force; but so well did we hold our position that his advance was much checked and very disastrous, and not until ordered by Colonel Berdan to fall back, did a single man leave the ranks.”
The one small incident could have been magnified to one of the most amazing fights of the whole campaign, had all of Berdan’s two regiments been there. His order to “advance firing” was a turning point in combat tactics. Moving fire was an uncommon tactic in the formal repertory of War. A volley, then fix bayonets and charge, continued to be the routine for decades after Berdan’s order. Yet his command could have come down in history as more famous than “don’t fire till you see the whites of their eyes.”
The breechloader-equipped green coats were able to keep up a rate of fire proportionately so much greater than the musket-equipped Southern infantry that with their small force they actually halted a division for an instant.
Longstreet admitted that the delay was critical— “That five minutes saved the day for the Army of the Potomac,” and put on record one of the first instances of troops advancing under cover of their own marching fire. Captain Stevens records that “All the generals who went over the historic field at a meeting of exofficers and soldiers 23 years after the battle, declared that the spot where Colonel Berdan’s command attacked Wilcox’s brigade was the turning point of the War.”
The effect on the Confederates was great. Wilcox’s lines were temporarily sent into a turmoil and the Sharp Shooters poured fire into the huddled masses of soldiers while the Sharps barrels burned their hands and the white smoke hung thick in front of them. In the 10th and 11th Alabama at the end of the line, receiving most of the Sharps bullets, more than 56 men were killed in the few minutes of firing. Forty gray dead lay close together and later the common grave was found to be over 100 yards long. General Wilcox in dispatches spoke of being under fire from “two Federal regiments,” deceived by the rapid firing of the breechloaders and the casualties during the short time they were engaged.
Unable to retreat or take cover from the merciless rain of lead from Berdan’s men, who on an average had fired some 95 shots, Colonel Forney of the 10th Alabama gave the order to charge but did not succeed in breaking up Berdan’s formation. The execution of the Sharps on the Confederate ranks was witnessed by a captured Berdan soldier, Peter Kipp of Company D. “We started for the rear, and passed through where Longstreet’s men had halted. It is impossible for me to describe the slaughter we had made in their ranks ... It beat all I had ever seen for the number engaged and for so short a time. They were piled in heaps and across each other ... I found hundreds of wounded men. The doctor would hardly believe there were so few of us fighting them, thought we had a corps, as he said he never saw lead so thick in his life as it was in those woods.”
Certainly the officers of the Sharpshooters never worried about their men not shooting. Less than five rounds per man was counted in their cartridge boxes when the company formed after withdrawal.
After Gettysburg on the 23rd the Third Corps was ordered to feel the enemy at Manassas Gap, resulting in the severe skirmish known as “Wapping Heights.” The Berdan Sharpshooters opened the engagement and bore most of the fighting, driving the Confederates through the gap and beyond the mountains. They inflicted severe losses on the Confederate troops, and collected some prisoners. In one capture, a man from the Sharpshooters, armed with his breech-loading Sharps, suddenly discovered a gray soldier levelling his rifle at him, at very short range. He swung his Sharps to his shoulder and both fired simultaneously. Neither shot struck the mark. With guns unloaded, they were now on equal terms but each supposed himself at a disadvantage, since the cartridges were the last ones possessed by either soldier.
“Yankee cheek was too much for the innocent Johnnie,” says Ripley in Company F, “for the Sharpshooter, with a great show of reloading his rifle, advanced on the Rebel demanding his surrender. He threw down his gun with bad grace, saying as he did so: ‘If I had another cartridge I would never surrender.’ ‘All right, Johnnie,’ said the Yankee, ‘If I had another you may be sure I would not ask you to surrender.’ But Johnnie came in a prisoner. In this action the Sharpshooters expended the full complement of sixty rounds of ammunition per man, thus verifying the assertion of their ancient enemy in the Ordnance Department that ‘the breechloaders would use up ammunition at an alarming rate;’ both he and others were by this time forced to admit, however, that the ammunition was expended to a very useful purpose.”