GDG- Re: BBook Review

[Biggsk at aol.com]

Tom,
 
A fine review and on its basis I will add it to my list of books to  obtain.  
Thanks much.

Although the Confederate Congress had authorized creation of sharpshooter  
battalions for each brigade on a discretionary basis as early as May 1862, the  
Confederate armies were slow to adapt to light infantry tactics and virtually  
left the field to Union troops until 1863.


Gen. Patrick Cleburne, commanding a division in the Confederate Army of the  
Mississippi (later Army of Tennessee) formed his first sharpshooters company  
while at Corinth, MS in the aftermath of Shiloh.  This was in April,  1862.  
Their role and size was greatly expanded so that by 1864 they were a  supreme 
menace to Sherman's artillerists especially by those armed with  Whitworth and 
Kerr rifles.
 
Cleburne, of course, had been in the British Army in ante-bellum times, and  
so was inculcated by their own history of light infantry armed with Baker 
rifles  in the Napoleonic Wars and probably the study of French light infantry 
regiments  also from that time frame.  I am always amazed at how much from the  
Napoleonic Wars the US Army chose to ignore and that the creation of  
sharpshooter units trained as light infantry, took so long to figure out.   The example 
of the French light regiments was certainly there to study.
 
Thanks again for the review.
 
Greg Biggs