>>106751316 In addition to carrying their trusty breech-loading weapons, the best shots in
Berdan’s two regiments deployed privately purchased telescopic target rifles for long-range tasks.
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The Morgan James rifle, the American target rifle, and the Northern target rifle—all of them
considered some of the best distance weapons in the world—saw use by talented green-coats.
These target rifles fired an octagonal bullet rammed down a much smaller bore. Berdan’s
Sharpshooters boasted of their ability to hit
targets more than 1,000 yards distant. Each
weapon came equipped with a globe or telescopic
sight. Lieutenant Charles Stevens of the 1st U.S.
Sharpshooters remarked, “These telescopes had
powerful magnifiers, so much so that a small
object could be seen at a long distance. But the
cross-wires within them tremble so easily that it
requires a steady hand to hold the cross on the
mark.” An infantry officer who looked through
these scopes marveled at “their power and the
distinctness with which objects of at least a mile
distant are brought under the eye of the
observer.” Although it took the steadiest of
nerves to make these weapons effective, such
technology gave Berdan’s men a powerful
advantage.17 One member of the 2nd U.S.
Sharpshooters, Sergeant Wyman White, once
used a thirty-pound telescopic target rifle in 1864.
One day during the Overland campaign, with
relative ease, he scattered a cluster of Confederate
engineers. White wrote in his diary, “I have no
doubt the working party of rebels was more than
a mile away and I had no trouble in driving them
away. I also have no doubt if I hit any of them,
they received an awful wound.”18
Early in the war, Berdan’s men served an
