Wipperman, Darin Thunderbolt to the Rebels

The United States Sharpshooters in the Civil War

Sharpshooters were the elite of the Union Army. Dressed in green uniforms and equipped with the most modern rifles and telescopic sights of their time, they took up positions in front of the infantry, where they targeted Confederate officers or engaged enemy soldiers. Regardless of how they were used, sharpshooters were an important presence on the battlefields throughout the Civil War, but most accounts focus more on their distinctive uniforms and state-of-the-art equipment than on their combat performance. Thunderbolt to the Rebels tells the story of these Civil War sharpshooters on the battlefields from Antietam to Gettysburg and beyond. In the first year of the Civil War, Hiram Berdan proposed the formation of a unit of sharpshooters armed with Sharps breech-loading rifles, and thus the 1st and 2nd US Sharpshooters were born. The soldiers, who came mainly from the Upper Midwest and New England, as well as Pennsylvania, had to pass a shooting test to be accepted: 10 shots into a 10-inch diameter circle from a distance of 200 yards. They were given green uniforms for better camouflage, but this also made it easier for Confederate marksmen to target them. The work of a sniper was dangerous and demandingusually on the front lines of the army and often alonebut they made a difference on the battlefield. Thunderbolt to the Rebels uses primary sources, particularly eyewitness accounts, to show how these elite marksmen lived, fought, and died during the Civil War.