Sharpshooters as Prisoners

Prisoners From The Front by Winslow Homer

“[Sharpshooters] are not likely often to be taken prisoners, as death is considered their just penalty; for as they very seldom are in a position to show mercy, so, in like manner, is mercy rarely shown to them.”  

            The dislike of sharpshooters raises the issue of whether a sharpshooter’s surrender would be accepted.  This is largely dependent on several factors: bitterness of the victor (influencing factors include casualties, the loss of friends, desire for revenge and stress of combat), an officer’s command presence and ability to control his men, and the need for prisoners.  Control by officers was almost lost at Battery Wagner (Morris Island, South Carolina) when black-Confederates captured there were suspected of being a dreaded sharpshooter who earned the enmity of their Federal captors.  Luckily for them they survived. 

            If we are given to believe that all regular soldiers hated sharpshooters, then no sharpshooter would ever be given quarter.  However, evidence supports that sharpshooters on both sides survived their initial capture long enough to be imprisoned or paroled.  Take for example the capture of the entire Twelfth Battalion of Arkansas Sharpshooters at Vicksburg or most of the First New York Sharpshooter battalion at Weldon Railroad (August 19, 1864).  On a more individual basis, perhaps the best example of two sharpshooters who were fortunate to be taken captive is that of Birge’s Western Sharpshooters Sgt. Albert Thompson and John Randall.  Armed with Henry rifles, they held off “a large force of rebels who were advancing upon them, and ordering them to surrender.”  They surrendered only after depleting their ammunition and destroying their guns.  Gen. Patrick Cleburne “was very mad at them for not surrendering instead of holding out to the last against such odds.”

            While these incidents may be dismissed as the general lack of any special identifying marks on their uniform, the same cannot be said of Berdan’s Sharpshooters or the Pennsylvania Bucktails whose uniforms distinguished them from the common infantryman.  Notwithstanding one Virginia’s newspaper advocating for summary execution of sharpshooters, the argument that sharpshooters were not shown mercy ignores that all sharpshooter regiments had men captured and imprisoned.  It may be that the threat of retaliation deterred the killing of prisoners and it worked for partisan cavalry commander Lt. Col. Mosby who operated behind the Union lines in Virginia.  In Lt. Col. Mosby’s letter to Maj. Gen. Philip Sheridan he promised, “any prisoners falling into my hands will be treated with kindness due to their condition, unless some new act of barbarity shall compel me, reluctantly, to adopt a line of policy repugnant to humanity.”  While it didn’t prevent the Fort Pillow Massacre or the killing of black soldiers at the Battle of the Crater, it prevented the Confederates from carrying out their pledge of executing all white officers who led them.

            Moving away from Virgina towards the Midwest or Trans-Mississippi Theatre, no evidence has been found supporting the wearing of special badges by Confederate sharpshooters. Col. Erasmus “Ras” Stirman described the uniforms of his regiment of sharpshooters in a July 1862 letter home to his sister: “I have them all uniformed in Gray with Caps and well armed and equipped in every respect....”  If his regiment did have emblems, Col. Stirman is silent about it.

            While the Midwest and Trans-Mississippi Confederate sharpshooter may not have worn badges, the evidence is growing that their more famous counterparts in the Army of Northern Virgina did.  Physical evidence survives in the form of a patch in the collection of the Maryland Historical Society.  The patch, a crude red quadrafoil against a dark blue (woolen) background, was worn by sharpshooter Henry Wise, Second Maryland Battalion.  It may be an attempt to replicate Maryland’s Bottony Cross, a symbol worn by Marylanders on both sides which may be seen on Confederate and Union Maryland monuments at Gettysburg National Battlefield Park.  Winslow Homer’s painting, “Prisoners From the Front,” includes one young Confederate who has a cross too dark to be red on his right sleeve.  Homer also illustrated Confederate Captain John Esteen Cooke’s post-war historic novel, “Surry of Eagles Nest,” in which depicts the story’s hero, a fictional aide to J. E. B. Stuart, with a cross on his right sleeve.  In both illustrations the subject is wearing high boots which suggests that he is either cavalry trooper or a staff officer and not an infantryman.  An x-ray of Prisoners from the Front shows that Homer had the soldier with the cross originally wearing a slouch hat.  More clues on the cross comes from Third North Carolina Assistant Surgeon Thomas Fanning Wood.  “When the campaign began in 1864, we were in General Ewell’s Corps (Jackson’s formerly), Ed Johnson’s Div., Steuart’s Brigade.  Steuart had devised some original badges for his men, of colored cloth, so that at a glance it could be told the Brigade, Regt., Co. of the man, the number of engagements he had been in, whether he was a Sharpshooter or an Ambulance Man, etc.”  However, the adoption of an badge by Steuart’s brigade may have been very limited as staff officer McHenry Howard points out:  “General Steuart also designed cloth badges (metal was not to be had), to distinguish the men of different regimentsa red cross on ground of different colors, or something that way.   But the failure to get the scraps of cloth from the factories prevented his carrying out this project.” When cloth could not be supplied by the quartermaster to implement Steuart’s plan, the men resorted to another means as described by the April 28, 1864 letter from Tenth Virginia Sergeant George Miley to his sweetheart, Amelia Baker:  "Our Brig. Genl. has an idea that his troops should be marked that they may be distinguished from all others, and requires us to wear a badge on our right arm with a red bar for each battle in which each one has participated.  Some or nearly all the boys are receiving theirs from sweethearts.  I don’t want to be behind and want to wear one made by you.  If not asking too much I will transmit the bars when I hear from you and describe if I can, how they are made.”  The wearing of patches or markings by the Confederate Army was first used in 1861 and is described by General William L. Cabell: “When the Confederate Army, commanded by General Beauregard, and the Federal Army confronted each other at Manassas, it was seen that the Confederate flag and the Stars and Stripes looked at a distance so much alike that it was hard to distinguish one from the other.  General Beauregard, thinking that serious mistakes might be made in recognizing our troops, ordered, after the battle of July 18, at Blackburn Ford, that a small red badge should be worn on the left shoulder by our troops, and, as I was chief quartermaster, ordered me to purchase a large quantity of red flannel and distribute it to each regiment. I distributed the red flannel to several regiments, who placed badges on the left shoulders of the men.” 

            When the various battalions adopted in the Army of Northern Virginia adopted a badge if it ever did is unknown.  The reader is cautioned that extent that badges were worn by Confederate sharpshooters in the Army of Northern Virginia is unclear and each brigade must be researched individually.  MacRae’s eighty strong sharpshooter unit was identified by a gold cross sewn onto their left sleeve.

            At the beginning of the campaign in 1864, McGowan’s sharpshooters weren’t wearing badges.  South Carolina’s McGowan’s Battalion Sharpshooter Sgt. Berry Benson conducted a private reconnaissance and was attempting to return to Confederate lines when he became fearful of his fate if caught by his own side.  “Having no pass, I would be arrested and taken to the camp and punished.  Me, a non-commissioned officer, and a Sharpshooter!”  At the Battle of The Wilderness Benson and his fellow sharpshooters resorted to “[b]reaking off twigs of pine, we set the green bunches in our hats to help us to hang together....”  Sometime during the course of the campaign McGowan’s brigade adopted one.  In his sketch of Moses Allen Terrell of Orr’s Rifle Regiment (First South Carolina) of McGowan’s brigade, Sgt. W. T. McGill recalled, "The Sharp Shooters were privileged characters. They were distinguished by a badge consisting of a red band running diagonally across the left elbow of the coat sleeve with a red star just above the band. This badge would pass the Sharp Shooter anywhere...”

            At the Battle of Sutherland Station (April 2, 1865), Union General Nelson Miles’ First Division, John Ramsey’s Fourth Brigade penetrated the Confederate lines between Henry Heth’s and Cadmus Wilcox’s Divisions (both belonged to A. P. Hill’s III Corps).  They swung left and rolled up Wilcox’s Division, capturing numerous Confederates.  Among Miles’ men was Private Daniel Chisholm of the 116th Pennsylvania Infantry whose observation on Confederate sharpshooters in Wilcox’s Division is noteworthy.  “Sunday, April 2ndAfter Genl Lee....  We took the road and lots of prisoners.  The sharp shooters had a red cross on their arms...”  Whether the captured sharpshooters were McGowan’s, Lane’s, Thomas’ or Scales’ is unknown.  However, according to McGowan’s Sharpshooters commander Capt. William S. Dunlop, many of McGowan’s men were captured.  “Three out of five of our regimental commanders, the commandant of the sharpshooters, and about the same proportion of line officers and men were captured either at Southerland Station or on the banks of the Appomattox...”  Also attesting to the severity of their casulties is McGowan sharpshooter Berry Benson who wrote, “Of our whole battalion of Sharpshootersthree companiesonly forty were left...”

            Returning to the issue of prisoners, we should not overlook the possibility that the diarist or letter writer may have intentionally omitted that they or their comrades slew hapless prisoners. After all, who would  want to be remembered for “murdering” defenseless men?  In the absence of admissions, evidence may be found from among surviving witnesses or bystanders. For instance, from eyewitnesses we know that some Confederate sharpshooters captured around Spotsylvania never reached the Provost Marshal.  When the soldier who was given custody of them was asked why he returned so soon, he admitted to killing them.  One surviving Union sharpshooter was First Andrew’s Sharpshooter Asa Fletcher who was wounded at Antietam and pleaded not to be bayoneted (while he wasn’t, he died of his wounds).  Similarly one Union captain at Gettysburg describes how men hunted down Confederate sharpshooters who were perched in a tree and, refusing any offer to surrender, shot them down instead. 

            At Devil’s Den, Gettysburg, chivalry was evident when the men from the Third Arkansas were captured after ferocious fighting.  Thinking they would not be given quarter, they were elated to learn that their captors were Berdan’s Sharpshooters who empathized with them.  In another incident at Gettysburg, when some Union soldiers believed that a Confederate sharpshooter was contemplating surrendering, they ceased firing and verbally encouraged him to desert.  At Spotsylvania, Fourteenth New York Heavy Artillery Seneca Indian Oliver Silverheels lost an Indian comrade to a Rebel sharpshooter in a tree.  Silverheels camouflaged himself from head to foot with foliage of a pine bough and taking his rifle, crept around and behind the Rebel sharpshooter.  Instead of shooting him, he ordered the Rebel: “Me no shoot.  You look back, me kill you.  Drop gun, come down, or me shoot you dead.  Me no tell again.” At the Siege of Petersburg, the Union gladly accepted the desertion of one of  Mahone’s sharpshooters. Col. George Sharpe:  “A deserter from the Sixty-first Virginia Regiment, Mahone’s old brigade, Mahone’s division, came into the lines of General [Gershom] Mott’s brigade, of General [David B.] Birney’s division, about 5 o’clock this a.m.  He states that he had just come out on his post as a sharpshooter and left his brigade in the breast-works...”

            Crucial to understanding the prisoner issue is that between fighting men a mutual respect developed and the victors could empathize with their prisoners.  First Michigan Sharpshooters Adjutant Ed Buckbee remarked, “the men who did the fighting in the front were not the men who used abusive language or made insulting speeches to their prisoners.”  After all, everybody knew that today’s victors could be tomorrow’s prisoners.  Also recall the numerous incidents where pickets, including sharpshooters, agreed to a truce and began exchanging newspapers or tobacco and coffee.  Sometimes  sharpshooters were not allowed to surrender or were killed after being captured.  However, the frequency is difficult to determine from the evidence at hand.  Clearly the absolute view that sharpshooters were “not likely to be taken prisoners” is as inaccurate as its opposing view and the truth lies somewhere in between.

            Once imprisoned, sharpshooters lost their distinction.  Some retained their fighting spirit and Confederate Thirtieth Battalion Virginia Sharpshooters James Conrad Peters and Fargus Perdue were involved in the death of a Union camp guard.  As it was common by 1864 for either side to give prisoners barely enough to subsist on, the quest for food was always on a prisoner’s mind and so it came about that sharpshooter Peters decided to steal some.  When Peters was bayonetted in the hindparts for stealing the guards’ food, Perdue struck and killed the guard with a brick.  Similarly, Sergeant George W. Darby, Eighth Regiment, Pennsylvania Volunteers, shares with us a story of a Bucktail imprisoned at Libby (Richmond): “One day a guard whose beat ran from the river to the camp on the outside of the fence along the lane, shot and killed a prisoner as he was returning with a bucket of water from the river.  A Buck Tail, who had seen the killing, armed himself with a shin bone and slipped down along the fence.  He reached over and struck the guard a fearful blow on the head, which killed him.  Boissieux [author’s note: camp commandant] shut off the rations of the camp and swore he would starve every ‘damned Yankee’ to death unless the man who killed the guard was found.  The men became desperate and threatening by evening and Boissieux’s cowardly heart failed him.  Fearing a prison revolt he rushed the grub into camp.”