Oct. 12, 2009 - Entry 2: Getting to know the officers

Oct. 12, 2009:

My schedule did not permit me to stay at the library today to research my officers in the 1-hour reserve sources, so I decided to check out Ancestry.com for starters. My Union officer's name did show up in a couple of locations, but in order to get more details I had to sign up for a 14-day free trial (at the end of which I would either cancel or agree to be billed $12.95 for a basic membership). I might go back and do this later. Being in somewhat of a hurry at this point, I decided to try Google and see what came up for my Union officer. A book titled "The Second United States Sharpshooters in the Civil War: A History and Roster" by Gerald L. Earley came up as the first reference, and I enjoyed what little bit I found. I found some interesting reading on Chaplain Barber, who was a "fighting parson" and considered to be one of the best marksmen in the Union army. I also found that he suffered a severe leg injury on Nov. 30, 1863, which was said to have ended his days as a "chaplain/sniper." The official records information I originally found was a report by Barber from Dec. 1864. I'll be interested to see if I can find any information to shed some light on what happened between the time of his injury and his report.

Reading the preface of this book also gave me some background information that I might not otherwise have found. For instance, the author talks of the South's perception that "Yankees couldn't fight" -- while the North believed it was superior to the South in education, industrialization, and naval and artillery capabilities, but inferior to the South in terms of ground forces (specifically marksmanship). Here begins the story of how the Union army sought to compensate by hiring Hiram Berdan, the country's "premier marksman," to recruit the best marksmen available to form a "regiment or corps of expert riflemen" (preface, page 1). As a result, the only two "pan-Yankee regiments in the Civil War -- the 1st and 2nd U.S. Sharpshooters, also known as "Berdan's Sharpshooters" -- were organized, and became the "standard by which all the others should be judged" (2).