586 
FOREST AND STREAM 
October, 191: 
THE STORY OF AMERICAN MARKSMANSHIP 
THE ART OF STRAIGHT SHOOTING PRESERVED THROUGH THE FORESIGHT OF MILITARY 
EXPERTS AND SPORTSMEN PROVES A DECISIVE FACTOR ON THE BATTLEFIELDS OF EUROPE 
By JONAS E. WHITLEY 
W AR news headlines have told how 
American riflemen shoot down 
Huns at a thousand yards and 
amaze French chiefs. The narrative of 
just how, when, and by whom the Ameri¬ 
can soldier was given that impetus as a 
rifle shot which today makes him man for 
man the superior of any fighting force in 
the world, is more than merely a bit of 
reminiscence. It goes back over half a 
century. The great Civil War had been 
brought to a finish; the most powerful 
army of trained soldiers in all the world— 
an army that had been led by Grant and 
Sherman, the accepted masters of military 
science of the day, was ready to return to 
peaceful pursuits of life. In a few months 
only a fragment of that mighty military 
organization remained. To be sure, the 
boys had brought home a lot of shooting 
irons, mostly of the old muzzle loading 
type; a few breech loaders had gotten into 
the service, but were more experimental 
than effective. The best shots had been 
in the Confederate ranks simply because 
some knowledge of firearms had long been 
considered the proper thing among the 
white aristocrats below the Mason and 
Dixon Line, and they controlled the forces 
of that region. 
In the North we had some shooters, too; 
but taking the Metropolis as a sample, 
those who tried to make a record as marks¬ 
men did so as members of various target 
companies. These were mainly of the 
Chowder Club type, where once a year the 
whole group got into rented uniforms and 
toted a lot of nondescript weapons, not a 
few being the make-believe type. Having 
reached a picnic park, a gaudily painted 
wooden target, bedecked with ribbons and 
flowers, which had been carried along at 
the tail of the parade by an able-bodied, 
smiling darky, was set up at a few yards 
range. Under the eye of a shooting gal¬ 
lery master, each man was in turn handed 
a rifle, tried a few shots, and then fol¬ 
lowed a distribution of showy mugs and 
medals to those lucky enough to puncture 
the wooden disk a yard in diameter, which 
was carefully brought home and duly dis¬ 
played in a place of honor at the club’s 
headquarters. 
There was another class of shooters who 
brought over the ocean the fashion of the 
Fatherland, and as members of various 
schuetzen corps, and bunds, and vereins, 
hied themselves on a pleasant day to some 
favored brewery park and with those 
heavy, unserviceable, small calibre weapons 
did some very close shooting indeed. Some 
of them had made trips across to their 
home towns and brought back the tradi¬ 
tions and customs of those who were car¬ 
rying out this German custom of making 
marksmen on their native soil. It was 
nothing more than a mixture of shooting, 
beer drinking and dancing, and this na¬ 
tional habit was transplanted to America 
and had no influence for good on our 
country’s soldiery. 
Then, too, in any number of back coun¬ 
try districts there were those jolly turkey 
shoots, where a poor gobbler was corralled 
in a stout box with a hole in the top from 
Copyright by Western Newspaper Union. 
Gen. George W. Wingate 
which his head projected and from which 
he preached a noisy protest as the bullets 
whizzed closely by his face, until finally 
one lucky marksman finished him and 
claimed the body as a prize. These turkey 
shoots were occasions of much joy of va¬ 
rious sorts, no end of chaffing, as some 
young, clean eyed youngster downed some 
conceited veteran. As each man was free 
in his choice of a weapon, they brought 
together a wonderful collection of rifles. 
There was here and there a group of 
shooters who were intent on showing just 
how precise a muzzle loader could be when 
all conditions were carried to an extreme. 
They had telescope sights. The weight 
of the weapon ran from 20 lbs. upwards. 
Of course, they were not fired from the 
shoulder, but from a sawbuck rest with 
setting screws fore and aft. Having spent 
a leisurely period at the magnifying ap¬ 
paratus, the shooter sat with his finger on 
the hair trigger and, watching for a lull 
in the breeze, touched it off and at forty 
rods would often find his dozen shots cov¬ 
ered by a playing card. There were clubs 
of trapshooters, of course, and at live tar¬ 
gets, too, but for rifle shooting proper the 
groups mentioned above practically pre¬ 
empted the field. 
T HIS was the situation when Captaii 
Wingate, an enthusiastic young law 
yer, took command of his company 
The National Guard was then made up 0 
many more units than at present. In thi 
City of New York the various nationali 
ties were well represented. Captain Wen 
dell, who owned a dance hall, had gath 
ered a group of ponderous German grocer 
and such into a troop and on parade witl 
their carbines they certainly made an im 
pressive sight. The French contingent hat 
been rounded up by Col. Gilon and wen 
very gay except for practical work. Then 
was a Scotch squad with their kilties anc 
war-like bagpipes. One regiment had beet 
annexed by Col. Jim Fiske to add glor> 
to his position as the “Prince of Erie.” 
All the regiments were in large measure 
social organizations. Each had the optioi 
of fixing on a full dress uniform according 
to its funds and fancy. The aristocratic 
Seventh adopted the gray and cross belts 
of West Point on parade and there was 
great consumption of polish and pipe cla> 
when a dress parade was called for. Other 
commands adopted the garb of various na¬ 
tional units abroad and the colored fash¬ 
ion plates of the uniform tailors of Europe 
were critically scanned for something 
startlingly different. When General Shal- 
ler ordered a parade of the entire New 
York City, or First Brigade, there was 
certainly something kaleidoscopic for the 
eye to fall upon, and as for noise, each 
regiment strained its pocketbook to pro¬ 
vide a band to outracket the others. It 
was at this time that Pat Gilmore, of Man¬ 
hattan Beach fame, came into prominence 
with his anvil choruses and cannon ac¬ 
companiments, and, by way of contrast, 
this noisy Gilmore’s Band was attached to 
the Twenty-second Regiment, the same 
regiment where Captain Wingate was do¬ 
ing his quiet stunt of getting at least one 
firing squad out of one company which 
would be able to know one end of a rifle 
from the other. He had a friend who had 
a farm in Jersey, just over the river, and 
the Captain borrowed the use of a back 
meadow over which to shoot. The owner, 
of course, as a prudent man, demanded a 
guarantee against cows and such being ac¬ 
cidentally winged. It must be borne in 
mind that this experience of Captain Win¬ 
gate’s was entirely unique in the National 
Guard. There were rules galore about at¬ 
tendance at drills, about the wearing of re¬ 
galia, about saluting and such, but there 
was no such officer as an inspector of rifle 
practice, and the armories with their com¬ 
pany rooms, and band rooms, and mag¬ 
nificent dancing floors for drill purposes 
had no such contrivance as a shooting gal¬ 
lery. Men who joined the Guard, put in 
a full term of service, and often ran over 
into the veteran class without ever being 
called upon to pull a trigger. The armorer 
looked to it that the weapons in the racks 
Reprinted by courtesy of National Service Magazine 
