The British officer peered carefully across the clearing toward the woods more than 200 yards away. No enemy was in the field, so it was safe to start across. He and his patrol would be well out of musket range until they were more than halfway across the open ground. Stepping into the field the officer saw a puff of smoke spurt up from the far woodline. It was the last physical sensation he would ever experience. Before the “crack” of the shot could reach his ears, he fell dead with a .45-caliber rifle ball through his heart. The men in his patrol were understandably discouraged by this event and returned to their lines, carrying the body of their officer, but without completing their mission.
Many British officers fell victim to the legendary long rifle wielded by a Patriot frontiersman. Today, they are often called “Kentucky rifles,” but during the Revolution they were known as “Pennsylvania rifles” or “long rifles.” These weapons represented a technological revolution that would eventually transform the battlefield.
The firing mechanism on the rifle was the same as that used on muskets. The difference between a rifle barrel and a musket was inside the barrel. In a rifle were spiral grooves cut into the metal that caused the rifle ball to spin in its flight, thus attaining much greater accuracy and range than a musket ball. This technological development did not originate in America, but it became synonymous with the American frontier.
The rifle developed in the alpine region of Europe and was especially associated with the German huntsman or “Jaeger.” German settlers brought their rifles with them to wildernesses of the New World. The Jaeger rifles were too short-barreled to develop high muzzle velocity and were too heavy to carry on hunts that might last weeks or months. Also, their large caliber used great quantities of powder and shot. All these characteristics were drawbacks on the frontier.
Out of conversations between frontiersmen and gun-smiths, there evolved the “long rifle.” A longer barrel gave great muzzle velocity, which caused smaller bullets to hit harder. The small caliber saved powder and shot. To speed up loading while retaining the accuracy created by a tightly fitting bullet, the rifle ball was slightly smaller than the bore but was wrapped in a patch of greased cloth. The resulting weapon was accurate at a range that the eighteenth century considered extremely long, relatively light in weight, conservative in its consumption of powder and shot, and esthetically appealing in its graceful lines.
The most famous maker of long rifles was Jacob Dickert of Pennsylvania, but his ideas were copied by gunsmiths all up and down the frontier. The caliber of these weapons varied from .35 to .60, but .45 and .50 were the most popular sizes, with barrel lengths of 36 to 48 inches.
Militarily, rifles had some drawbacks. Unlike muskets, which could be manufactured relatively quickly and cheaply, rifles were individual creations of master gunsmiths who worked long hours with relatively crude tools to cut the rifling grooves into the barrels. The weapons also took a comparatively long time to load. An experienced musketman could get off four or five shots while a rifleman was firing and reloading once. In eighteenth-century warfare the volume of fire was more important than accuracy, so muskets ruled the battlefield and would for almost another century. Tactics would also continue to reflect the presence of a short-range infantry weapon with limited accuracy. Finally, rifles were primarily hunting weapons and were not made to receive a bayonet. The climactic moment of most eighteenth-century battles was a bayonet charge, so riflemen were of limited usefulness in such situations. In hand-to-hand fighting, the frontier rifleman used a knife or a tomahawk.
The largest army ever commanded by George Washington was one of about TWENTY-SIX THOUSAND MEN.
It was its range that made the long rifle a feared weapon. While accurate musket range was around 80 yards, a skilled rifleman could consistently hit targets at 300 yards, almost four times the effective range of a musket. This meant the person in the rifleman’s sights would literally never know who or what hit them. The British considered such tactics as deliberately aimed fire at a specific target to be “ungentle-manly,” but the frontier riflemen did not consider themselves gentlemen. They were, however, good shots.
The riflemen made their first appearance on the battlefield in late August 1775, when a company commanded by Daniel Morgan joined George Washington’s army at the Siege of Boston. Dressed in a leather or linen hunting shirt that came halfway between his knees and thighs and was belted at the waist, the riflemen were effectively camouflaged. Breeches with leggings and moccasins completed the distinctive dress of the long-rifle-carrying frontiersman. This appearance alone astonished both the militia from the settled areas and the nattily uniformed British. For these men shooting was a serious matter, not a sport. Domestic meat animals were scarce on the frontier, and a family’s food supply might well depend on one’s accuracy with a rifle. In a more direct fashion, family security from danger depended on the family’s firearms and the ability to use them well.
Before being sent out to snipe at the British, the rifle-men gave a demonstration of what they and their rifles could do. The entire company consistently put ball after ball into a 17-inch-wide target at a range of 250 yards. At 150 yards some of the riflemen held the target between their knees while their comrades shot holes into it. These marksmen soon had made such an impression on the British that Washington gave orders that they should not fire unless they had a clear shot. He did not want misses to ruin their reputation.
After the British evacuation of Boston, the riflemen were sent north to join the Patriot army under Gen. Horatio Gates, who was guarding the Lake Champlain-Hudson River approach to New England. When fighting erupted at Freeman’s Farm on September 19, 1777, Daniel Morgan’s men found themselves opposing a force of one hundred men commanded by Maj. Gordon Forbes of the Royal Army. Within five minutes every officer in Forbes’s force was dead or wounded. The riflemen looked for men with epaulets or silver gorgets and killed them first. During later fighting at Saratoga, one of the British division commanders, Simon Frasier, was deliberately targeted and killed by a sharp-eyed Patriot rifleman.
When the British retreated from Saratoga on October 10, 1777, their rear guard constructed a small redoubt with log walls 4 feet high. Knowing Morgan and his rifle-men were coming after them, the British soldiers stayed flat on the ground behind the logs. Finally, a man lifted his cap on the ramrod of his musket. Three rifle balls hit the cap simultaneously.
Throughout the rest of the war, whenever circumstances favored small-scale skirmishing, the men with the long rifles found their niche. At Cowpens, Kings Mountain, and a dozen more battles, the men and their weapon carved themselves a place in the history of the emerging nation.