Sir Joseph Whitworth (1803-1867) was not a soldier, nor was he an ordnance expert or professional gunsmith. He earned his knighthood as a mechanical engineer. He designed the tooling used in the 1853 Enfield but this was not his greatest tribute to the firearms industry. He continued to experiment and concluded that the system of relying on the spiral grooves of a rifle to spin the bullet was mechanically flawed. He designed a barrel with a polygonal bore, which utilizes a series of planes rotating gently to impart spin to the bullet.

In contrast with the Enfield with a .577-caliber bullet weighing 560 grains, and was fired from a barrel with a rifling twist of one turn every 78 inches, his weapon had a .45-caliber bullet of 530 grains and a full twist every 20 inches of the barrel. It out shot the Enfield at ranges of 500 to 1,800 yards.

It war during the American Civil War, when the South imported tens of thousands of the English Enfields, that smaller quanities of both the Whitworth and a rival, the Kerr, were also run through the Union Blockade.

According to the records, Whitworths were carried by the Palmetto Sharpshooters of South Carolina and by at least 20 members of Company F of the 8th North Carolina Infantry. About 6 were issued to the Army of Northern Virginia in time for the Gettysburg Campaign, and the same amount went to the Army of Tennessee.

Sharpshooters were tactically employed in several ways. Their precision firing not only demoralized the troops and inflicted casualties, but also deprived them of leadership by singling out officers as targets. Artillery Batteries were also prime targets for the snipers, who would cripple them by downing gunners or killing the horses that drew the weapons.

From the record, Major General Patrick Cleburne of the Army of Tennessee stated that "Mounted men were struck at distances of 700 to 1,300 yards".

To emphasize the accuracy of the weapon, here are a few more from the records. A Private John Ving of the 20th Tennessee downed a Union Officer at the range of one mile. A Trooper Henry Green of another Tennesse Regiment dropped mules of supply wagons at a range of one mile to a point where the entire roadway was blocked with dead mules and a new and safer route had to be taken to bring in supplies.

At Spring Hill, Lieutenant Isaac Shannon's men zeroed in on a Union Artillery Battery at 450 yards and drove it from the field in 20 minutes. The next day they concentrated fire on Battery A of the 2nd Missouri Artillery at a range of 1,200 yards. When the Artillery brought a gun forward to silence the snipers, Shannon dropped 3 men before they could bring the gun into action.

In Georgia there is a record of the Whitworth being used at a range of 3 1/2 miles to drop horses and mules pulling Union supply wagons.

From the Army of Northern Virginia comes the following: A Sergeant Grace of the 4th Georgia, at Spotsylvania, Va, made one of the most famous shots of the war on 9 May 1864.

Major General John Sedgwick was checking positions of the Army of the Potomac when he stopped to berate the men of the 14th New Jersey Regiment for being skittish of the sniper fire. From 800 yards away Grace took aim.

Sedgwick said "What! Men, dodging this way for single bullets, what will you do when they open fire along the whole line? I am ashamed of you. They couldn't hit an elephant at this distance."

At that exact moment, Grace's Whitworth slug hit him just below the left eye. Moments later the General lay dead.

At Petersburg, the record shows that 3 Union Officers were dropped with 3 shots at a range of 2,250 yards. The men had actually died before the sound of the shot could reach their ears.

Gettysburg

Let us get back to Gettysburg at this point. Most like the sharpshooters in Devil's Den carried Whitworths or Kerrs. If you should visit that area, we will now burst the bubble twice.

First, Devil's Den was named not for the battle, but many years before the battle by the country folk in that area. Second, you will see a photograph of a Southern soldier made by Alexander Gardner. Gardner faked the picture by dragging the body from some other location and placing it there.