Lees Sharpshooters

Download or read book Lee's Sharpshooters written by and published by Digital Scanning Inc. This book was released on 2016-02-01 with total page 478 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In early 1864, Robert E. Lee began experimenting with tactical innovations for the upcoming spring campaign. To this end, he ordered the organization of sharpshooter battalions. In Lee’s Sharpshooters Dunlop chronicles the training processes, the ordnance tests and the marksmanship exercises the soldiers went through to become skilled and confident skirmishers. Robert E. Lee’s decision didn’t turn the tide of the war, but it did give rise to the specialized soldier whose “intelligence, marksmanship and unfaltering courage” was remarkable. Contributions from other battalions such as those of Lt. Robert F. Ward from Davis’s Mississippi brigade provide first hand accounts of the sharpshooters’ part in the battles of Wilderness and Spotsylvania.