Shooting Practice

Camp Burnside

Annapolis

December 18, 1861

Friends at Home;

This afternoon, we went out targetshooting. None of us did anything worthy of mention. My 2nd shot was next best made in the company today—and it was 4 or 5 inches from the bulls eye. Shot three times, hit the target twice. 

Our guns shoot straight enough to shoot at men. If we don’t hit one, it may another. The balls go strongly. Often when they strike the ground and glance like a flat stone on water and go whistling over the rise of ground that we shoot against. Occassionally one turns down soon after it leaves the ground much to the displeasure of the shooter.

Near Bermuda Hundred, Va.

May 28th l863

Dear Brother and Friends at Home

Of course bullets are governed by natural laws in every respect. I think I may state as true that nearly all lives lost, and wounds received, are from shots aimed at some other person, or at no one in particular. I don’t think that more than 1 ball out of 100 touches the life it is aimed at. It is a source of wonder to all, when in battle, when bullets are flying thick all around, that only a few get hit. After we had been made to give way the other morning near Fort Darling, some of us formed behind some logs on the flank of another Regiment. One man, from another Regiment was out in front of us, very bold, hollering at the rebels and firing as he saw fit. We asked him to get back on a line with us. A short time afterwards I noticed him on my right exposing himself in the same way. He was just ready to fire and was looking defiantly at the rebels when a shot struck him in the breast. He cried out “I am hit” and with death struggles turned and stepped 5 or 6 paces to the rear falling on his face dead. That was the first bullet I ever witnessed as touching its intended life. Was conscious of a bullet coming very near my head once as I raised up over the breastwork to fire at a man behind a tree not far from me. I did my best at all the rebellion embodied in him. I see no difference between men being hit whether they are Christians of not....(page missing from letter)

It is a natural consequence of our influences that men should talk of shooting another as if it were a small affair. When the war ends there will be an element abroad that we once should (have) considered an evil omen for moral civilization. But this is part of the cost of the war as Greeley summed it up two years ago. I think he said that six months of civil war would put back our moral civilization 50 years.