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VERMONT RIFLEMEN

IN THE

WAR FOR THE UNION,

A HISTORY OF COMPANY F,

FIRST UNITED STATES SHARP SHOOTERS,

WM. Y. W. RIPLEY, LT. COL.

Rutland: TUTTLE & CO., PRINTERS. 1883.

Abate the edge of traitors, gracious Lord. That would reduce these bloody days again, And make poor England weep in streams of blood! Let them not live to taste this land's increase, That would with treason wound this fair land's peace! Now civil wounds are stopp'd, peace lives again; That she may long live here, God say--Amen!

ORGANIZATION.

Very soon after the outbreak of the war for the Union, immediately, in fact, upon the commencement of actual operations in the field, it became painfully apparent that, however inferior the rank and file of the Confederate armies were in point of education and general intelligence to the men who composed the armies of the Union, however imperfect and rude their equipment and material, man for man they were the superiors of their northern antagonists in the use of arms. Recruited mainly from the rural districts , their armies were composed mainly of men who had been trained to the skillful use of the rifle in that most perfect school, the field and forest, in the pursuit of the game so abundant in those sparsely settled districts. These men, who came to the field armed at first, to a large extent, with their favorite sporting or target rifles, and with a training acquired in such a school, were individually more than the equals of the men of the North, who were, with comparatively few exceptions, drawn from the farm, the workshop, the office or the counter, and whose life-long occupations had been such as to debar them from those pursuits in which the men of the South had gained their skill. Indeed, there were in many regiments in the northern armies men who had never even fired a gun of any description at the time of their enlistment.

On the other hand, there were known to be scattered throughout the loyal states, a great number of men who had made rifle shooting a study, and who, by practice on the target ground and at the country shooting matches, had gained a skill equal to that of the men of the South in any kind of shooting, and in long range practice a much greater degree of excellency.

There were many of these men in the ranks of the loyal army, but their skill was neutralized by the fact that the arms put into their hands, although the most perfect military weapons then known, were not of the description calculated to show the best results in the hands of expert marksmen.

Occasionally a musket would be found that was accurate in its shooting qualities, and occasionally such a gun would fall into the hands of a man competent to appreciate and utilize its best features. It was speedily found that such a gun, in the hands of such a man, was capable of results not possible to be obtained from a less accurate weapon in the hands of a less skillful man. To remedy this state of affairs, and to make certain that the best weapons procurable should be placed in the hands of the men best fitted to use them effectively, it was decided by the war department, early in the summer of 1861, that a regiment should be organized, to be called the First Regiment of United States Sharp Shooters, and to consist of the best and most expert rifle shots in the Northern States. The detail of the recruiting and organization of this regiment was entrusted to Hiram Berdan, then a resident of the city of New York, himself an enthusiastic lover of rifle shooting, and an expert marksman.

Col. Berdan set himself earnestly at work to recruit and organize such a body of men as should, in the most perfect manner, illustrate the capacity for warlike purposes of his favorite weapon.

It was required that a recruit should possess a good moral character, a sound physical development, and in other respects come within the usual requirements of the army regulations; but, as the men were designed for an especial service, it was required of them that before enlistment they should justify their claim to be called "sharp shooters" by such a public exhibition of their skill as should fairly entitle them to the name, and warrant a reasonable expectation of usefulness in the field. To insure this it was ordered that no recruit be enlisted who could not, in a public trial, make a string of ten shots at a distance of two hundred yards, the aggregate measurement of which should not exceed fifty inches. In other words, it was required that the recruit should, in effect, be able to place ten bullets in succession within a ten-inch ring at a distance of two hundred yards.

Any style of rifle was allowed--telescopic sights, however, being disallowed--and the applicant was allowed to shoot from any position he chose, only being required to shoot from the shoulder.

Circular letters setting forth these conditions, and Col. Berdan authority, were issued to the governors of the loyal states, and, as a first result from the state of Vermont, Capt. Edmund Weston of Randolph applied for and received of Gov. Holbrook authority to recruit one company of sharp shooters, which was mustered into the service as Co. F, First United States Sharp Shooters, and is the subject of this history.

Capt. Weston at once put himself in communication with well known riflemen in different parts of the state and appointed recruiting officers in various towns to receive applications and superintend the trials of skill, without which no person could be accepted.

The response was more hearty and more general than could have been expected, and many more recruits presented themselves than could be accepted--many of whom, however, failed to pass the ordeal of the public competition--and, as the event proved, more were accepted than could be legally mustered into the service.

All who were accepted, however, fully met the rigid requirements as to skill in the use of the rifle.

The company rendezvoused at Randolph early in September, 1861, and on the 13th of that month were mustered into the state service by Charles Dana. The organization of the company as perfected at this time was as follows:

Thus organized, the company, with one hundred and thirteen enlisted men, left the state on the same day on which they were mustered, and proceeded via New Haven and Long Island Sound to the rendezvous of the regiment at Weehawken Heights, near New York, where they went into camp with other companies of the regiment which had preceded them. On or about the 24th of September the regiment proceeded under orders from the war department to Washington, arriving at that city at a late hour on the night of the twenty-fifth, and were assigned quarters at the Soldiers' Rest, so well known to the troops who arrived at Washington at about that time. On the twenty-sixth they were ordered to a permanent camp of instruction well out in the country and near the residence and grounds of Mr. Corcoran, a wealthy resident of Washington of supposed secession proclivities, where they were for the first time in a regularly organized camp, and could begin to feel that they were fairly cut off at last from the customs and habits of civil life. Here they were regularly mustered into the service of the United States, thirteen enlisted men being rejected, however, to reduce the company to the regulation complement of one hundred enlisted men; so that of the one hundred and thirteen men charged to the company on the rolls of the Adjt. and Ins.-Gen. of Vermont, only one hundred took the field. Other companies from different states arrived at about the same time, and the regiment was at last complete, having its full complement of ten companies of one hundred men each.

The field and staff at this time was made up as follows:

Colonel, H. Berdan. Lieutenant-Colonel, Frederick Mears. Major, W. S. Rowland. Adjutant, Floyd A. Willett. Quarter-Master, W. H. Beebe. Surgeon, G. C. Marshall. Assistant Surgeon, Dr. Brennan. Chaplain, Rev. Dr. Coit.

Many of the men had, with this understanding, brought with them their own rifles, and with them target shooting became a pastime, and many matches between individuals and companies were made and many very short strings were recorded.

Under the stimulus of competition and organized practice great improvement was noted in marksmanship, even among those who had been considered almost perfect marksmen before. On one occasion President Lincoln, accompanied by Gen. McClellan, paid a visit to the camp and asked to be allowed to witness some of the sharp shooting of which he had heard so much.

A detail of the best men was made and a display of skill took place which, perhaps, was never before equalled. President Lincoln himself, as did Gen. McClellan, Col. Hudson and others of the staff, took part in the firing, the President using a rifle belonging to Corporal H. J. Peck of the Vermont company.

At the close of the exhibition Col. Berdan, being asked to illustrate the accuracy of his favorite rifle, fired three shots at different portions of the six hundred yard target; when having satisfied himself that he had the proper range, and that both himself and rifle could be depended upon, announced that at the next shot he would strike the right eye of the gaily colored Zouave which, painted on the half of an A tent, did duty for a target at that range. Taking a long and careful aim, he fired, hitting the exact spot selected and announced beforehand. Whether partly accidental or not it was certainly a wonderful performance and placed Col. Berdan at once in the foremost rank of rifle experts. On the 28th of November, the day set apart by the governors of the loyal states as Thanksgiving Day, shooting was indulged by in different men of Co. F and other companies for a small prize offered by the field officers, the terms being two hundred yards, off hand, the shortest string of two shots to win. The prize was won from a large number of skillful contestants by Ai Brown of Co. F--his two shots measuring 4-1/4 inches, or each within 2-1/8 inches of the center.

On the 7th of December another regimental shooting match took place; the prize going this time to a Michigan man, his string of three shots, fired off hand at two hundred yards, measuring six inches. These records are introduced here simply for the purpose of showing the wonderful degree of skill possessed by these picked marksmen in the use of the rifle. But it was soon found that there were objections to the use in the field of the fine guns so effective on the target ground. The great weight of some of them was of itself almost prohibitory, for, to a soldier burdened with the weight of his knapsack, haversack and canteen, blanket and overcoat, the additional weight of a target rifle--many of which weighed fifteen pounds each, and some as much as thirty pounds--was too much to be easily borne.

It was also found difficult to provide the proper ammunition for such guns in the field, and finally, owing to the delicacy of the construction of the sights, hair triggers, etc., they were constantly liable to be out of order, and when thus disabled, of even less use than the smooth-bore musket, with buck and ball cartridge of fifty years before. Manufacturers of fine guns from all parts of our own country, and many from Europe, flocked to the camp of the sharp shooters offering their goods, each desirous of the credit of furnishing arms to a body of men so well calculated to use them effectively, and many fine models were offered. The choice of the men, however, seemed to be a modified military rifle made by the Sharpe Rifle Manufacturing Co., and a request was made to the war department for a supply of these arms. At this early day, however, the departments were full of men whose ideas and methods were those of a half a century gone by; and at the head of the ordinance department was a man who, in addition to being of this stamp, was the father of the muzzle loading Springfield rifle, then the recognized arm of the United States Infantry, and from him came the most strenuous opposition to the proposal to depart from the traditions of the regular army.

Gen. McClellan, and even the President himself, were approached on this subject, and both recognized the propriety of the proposed style of armament and the great capacity for efficient service possessed by the regiment when it should be once satisfactorily armed and fairly in front of the enemy. But the ordinance department was ever a block in the way; its head obstinately and stubbornly refusing to entertain any proposition other than to arm the regiment with the ordinary army musket; and, to add to the growing dissatisfaction among the men over the subject of arms, it became known that the promises made to them at the time of enlistment, that the government would pay them for their rifles at the rate of sixty dollars each, was unauthorized and would not be fulfilled; and also that the representations made to them with respect to telescopic breech loaders were likewise unauthorized. Discontent became general and demoralization began to show itself in an alarming form.

Some of the field officers were notoriously incompetent; the Major, one of those military adventurers who floated to the surface during the early years of the war, particularly so; he was a kind of a modern Dalgetty without the courage or skill of his renowned prototype, rarely present in camp, and when there of little or no service. The Lieutenant-Colonel, a man of rare energy and skill in his profession, and whose painstaking care had made the regiment all that it was at that time, fearing the after effects of this demoralization on the efficiency of the command, and seeing opportunity for his talents in other fields, resigned; and on the 29th of November, 1861, Wm. Y. W. Ripley of Rutland, Vt., was appointed Lieutenant-Colonel, and Caspar Trepp, Captain of Co. A., was made Major. Lieutenant-Colonel Ripley had seen service only as Captain of Co. K, First Vermont Volunteers. Major Trepp had received a thorough military training in the army of his native Switzerland, and had seen active service in European wars. The regiment remained at camp of instruction under the immediate command of Lieut.-Col. Ripley, employed in the usual routine of camp duty, drills, etc., during the whole of the winter of 1861-62, particular attention being paid to the skirmish drill, in which the men became wonderfully proficient; and it is safe to say that for general excellence in drill, except the manual of arms, they were excelled by few volunteer regiments in the service. All orders were given by the sound of the bugle, and the whole regiment deployed as skirmishers could be as easily maneuvered as a single company could be in line of battle. The bugle corps was under the charge of Calvin Morse of Co. F as chief bugler, and under his careful instruction attained to an unusual degree of excellence. All camp and other calls were sounded on the bugle, and the men found them pleasant little devices for translating curt and often rough English into music. They were bugled to breakfast and to dinner, bugled to guard mounting and bugled to battle, brigades moved and cavalry charged to the sound of the bugle. The men often found fanciful resemblances in the notes of the music to the words intended to be conveyed. Thus, the recall was sung as follows:

"Come back again, come back again, Come back, come back, come back again."

while the sick call was thus rendered into words:

"Come to qui-nine, come to qui-nine, Come to qui-i-nine, come to qui-i-nine."

They were not, on the whole, bad translations. The winter was an unusually severe one, and, as the enemy maintained a strict blockade of the Potomac, the supply of wood was often short, and some suffering was the result. The health of the regiment remained fairly good; measles, small pox, and other forms of camp diseases appeared, however, and Co. F, of course, suffered its share, losing by death from disease during the winter, Wm. T. Battles, Edward Fitz, Sumner E. Gardner and Geo. H. Johnson.

On the 20th of March, 1862, the regiment received orders to report to Major-Gen. Fitz John Porter, whose division then lay at Alexandria, Va., awaiting transportation to Fortress Monroe to join the army under McClellan. At this time the regiment was without arms of any kind, except for the few target rifles remaining in the hands of their owners, and a few old smooth bore muskets which had been used during the winter for guard duty. Shortly before this time the war department, perhaps wearied by constant importunity, perhaps recognizing the importance of the subject, had so far receded from its former position as to offer to arm the regiment with revolving rifles of the Colt pattern, and had sent the guns to the camp for issue to the men with promise of exchanging them for Sharpe's rifles at a later day. They were five chambered breech loaders, very pretty to look at, but upon examination and test they were found inaccurate and unreliable, prone to get out of order and even dangerous to the user. They were not satisfactory to the men, who knew what they wanted and were fully confident of their ability to use such guns as they had been led by repeated promises to expect, to good advantage. When, however, news came that the rebels had evacuated Manassas, and that the campaign was about to open in good earnest, they took up these toys, for after all they were hardly more, and turned their faces southward. Co. F was the first company in the regiment to receive their arms, and to the influence of their patriotic example the regiment owes its escape from what at one time appeared to be a most unfortunate embarrassment.

The march to Alexandria over Long Bridge was made in the midst of a pouring rain and through such a sea of mud as only Virginia can afford material for. It was the first time the regiment had ever broken camp, and its first hard march. It was long after dark when the command arrived near Cloud's mills; the headquarters of Gen. Porter could not be found, and it became necessary for the regiment to camp somewhere for the night. At a distance were seen the lights of a camp, which was found upon examination to be the winter quarters of the 69th New York in charge of a camp guard, the regiment having gone out in pursuit of the enemy beyond Manassas. A few persuasive words were spoken to the sergeant in command, and the tired and soaked sharp shooters turned into the tents of the absent Irishmen.

THE PENINSULAR CAMPAIGN.

On the 22d of March the regiment embarked on the steamer Emperor, bound for Fortress Monroe. The day was bright and glorious, the magnificent enthusiasm on every hand was contagious, and few who were partakers in that grand pageant will ever forget it. Alas! however, many thousands of that great army never returned from that fatal campaign. The orders required that each steamer, as she left her moorings, should pass up the river for a short distance, turn and pass down by Gen. Porter's flag-ship, saluting as she passed--a sort of military-naval review.

As the twenty-two steamers conveying this magnificent division thus passed in review, bands playing, colors flying and the men cheering, it was an inspiring spectacle for the young soldiers who were for the first time moving toward the enemy. The enthusiasm was kept up to fever heat until the leading steamers reached Mount Vernon, when, as though by order, the cheering ceased, flags were dropped to half-mast, the strains of "The girl I left behind me," and "John Brown's body," gave way to funereal dirges, and all hats were doffed as the fleet passed the tomb of Washington. On the twenty-third the regiment disembarked at Hampton, Va., and went into camp at a point about midway between that place and Newport's News, where they remained several days, awaiting the arrival of the other divisions and the artillery and supplies necessary before the march on Yorktown could commence.

Hampton Roads was a scene of the greatest activity, hundreds of ships and steam transports lay at the docks discharging their cargoes of men and material, or at anchor in the broad waters adjacent awaiting their turn. Both army and navy here experienced a period of the most intense anxiety. Only a few days previous to the arrival of the first troops, the rebel iron-clad, Merrimac, had appeared before Newport's News, only a few miles away, and had made such a fearful display of her power for destruction as to excite the gravest apprehension lest she should again appear among the crowded shipping, sinking and destroying, by the simple battering power of her immense weight, these frail steamboats crowded with troops; but she had had a taste of the Monitor's quality, and did not apparently care to repeat the experiment. While thus awaiting the moment for the general advance, Fitz John Porter's division was ordered to make a reconnoissance in the direction of Great Bethel, the scene of the disaster of June 10, 1861. The division moved on two roads nearly parallel with each other. A body of sharp shooters led the advance of each column, that on the right being under the command of Lieut.-Col. Ripley, while those on the left were commanded by Col. Berdan.

This was the first time that the regiment had ever had the opportunity to measure its marching qualities with those of other troops; they had been most carefully and persistently drilled in this particular branch, and as they swept on, taking the full twenty-eight inch step and in regulation time, they soon left the remainder of the column far in rear, at which they were greatly elated, and when Capt. Auchmuty of Gen. Morell's staff rode up with the General's compliments and an inquiry as to "whether the sharp shooters intended to go on alone, or would they prefer to wait for support," their self-glorification was very great.

Later, however, they ceased to regard a march of ten or fifteen miles at their best pace as a joke. Co. F was with the right column, under Col. Ripley, and came for the first time under hostile fire. No serious fighting took place, although shots were frequently exchanged with the rebel cavalry, who fell back slowly before the Union advance. At Great Bethel a slight stand was made by the enemy, who were, however, soon dislodged by the steady and accurate fire of the sharp shooters, with some loss. Pushing on, the regiment advanced some three miles towards Yorktown, where, finding no considerable force of the enemy disposed to make a stand, and the object of the reconnoissance having been accomplished, both columns returned to camp near Fortress Monroe. The march had been a long and severe one for new troops, but Co. F came in without a straggler and in perfect order.

On the 3d of April Gen. McClellan arrived at Fortress Monroe, and early on the morning of the fourth the whole army was put in motion toward Yorktown, where heavy works, strongly manned, were known to exist. The sharp shooters led the advance of the column on the road by which the Fifth Corps advanced, being that nearest the York river. Slight resistance was made by the enemy's cavalry at various points, but no casualties were experienced by Co. F on that day.

Cockeysville, a small hamlet some sixteen miles from Hampton, was reached, and the tired men of Co. F laid down in bivouac for the first time. Heretofore their camps, cheerless and devoid of home comforts as they sometimes were, had had some element of permanence; this was quite another thing, and what wonder if thoughts of home and home comforts flitted through their minds. Then, too, all supposed that on the morrow would occur a terrible battle ; nothing less than immediate and desperate assault was contemplated by the men, and, as some complimentary remarks had been made to the regiment, and especial allusion to the effect those five shooting rifles, held in such trusty and skillful hands, would have in a charge, they felt that in the coming battle their place would be a hot and dangerous, as well as an honorable one. At daybreak on the morning of the fifth, in a soaking rain storm, the army resumed its march, the sharp shooters still in the advance, searching suspicious patches of woods, streaming out from the road to farm houses, hurrying over and around little knolls behind which danger might lurk, while now and then came the crack of rifles from a group across a field, telling of the presence of hostile cavalry watching the advance of the invaders. More strenuous resistance was met with than on the day before, but the rebels fell back steadily, if slowly. The rain fell continuously and the roads became difficult of passage for troops. The sharp shooters, however, fared better in this respect than troops of the line, for deployed as skirmishers, covering a large front, they could pick their way with comparative ease. At ten o'clock A. M., all resistance by rebel cavalry having ceased, the skirmishers emerged from dense woods and found themselves immediately in front of the heavy earth works before Yorktown. They were at once saluted by the enemy's artillery, and were now for the first time under the fire of shell.

Dashing forward one or two hundred yards, the skirmishers took position along and behind the crest of a slight elevation crowned by hedges and scattered clumps of bushes. The men of Co. F found themselves in a peach orchard surrounding a large farm house with its out-buildings. In and about these buildings, and along a fence running westwardly from the cluster of houses, Co. F formed its line, at a distance of some five hundred yards from a powerful line of breastworks running from the main fort in front of Yorktown to the low ground about the head of Warwick creek.

Once in position, Co. F went at its work as steadily and coolly as veterans. Under the direction of a field officer, who watched the result with his glass, a few shots were fired by picked men at spots in the exterior slope of the works to ascertain the exact range, which was then announced and the order given, "Commence firing."

The rebels, ensconced in fancied security behind their strong works, and who up to that time had kept up a constant and heavy fire from their artillery, while their infantry lined the parapets, soon found reason to make themselves less conspicuous and to modify very essentially the tone of their remarks, which had been the reverse of complimentary. Gun after gun was silenced and abandoned, until within an hour every embrasure within a range of a thousand yards to the right and left was tenantless and silent. Their infantry, which at first responded with a vigorous fire, found that exposure of a head meant grave danger, if not death.

Occasionally a man would be found, who, carried away by his enthusiasm, would mount the parapet and with taunting cries seem to mock the Union marksmen, but no sooner would he appear than a score of rifles would be brought to bear, and he was fortunate indeed if he escaped with his life. At this point occurred the first casualty among the men of Co. F, Corp. C. W. Peck receiving a severe wound. During the day a small body of horsemen, apparently the staff and escort of a general officer, appeared passing from the village of Yorktown, behind the line of breastworks before spoken of, towards their right. When first observed little more than the heads of the riders were visible above the breastworks; near the western end of their line, however, the ground on which they were riding was higher, thus bringing them into plainer view, and as they reached this point every rifle was brought into use, and it appeared to observers that at least half the saddles in that little band were emptied before they could pass over the exposed fifty yards that lay between them and safety. While the sharp shooters had been successful in silencing the fire of the enemy's cannon, and almost entirely so that of their infantry, a few of the rebel marksmen, who occupied small rifle pits in advance of their line of works, kept up an annoying fire, from which the Union artillerists suffered severely.

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