Book Review: The 2nd U.S. Sharpshooters at Gettysburg: Like a Perfect Hornet’s Nest
The 2nd U.S. Sharpshooters at Gettysburg: Like a Perfect Hornet’s Nest. By Mark W. Allen. Jefferson, NC: McFarland and Company, 2024. 212 pp. $29.95.
Reviewed by Timothy J. Orr
Mark W. Allen’s The 2nd U.S. Sharpshooters at Gettysburg: Like a Perfect Hornet’s Nest explores the Gettysburg history of a unique rifle regiment that deployed as skirmishers. As such, Allen tells the tale of the 2nd U.S. Sharpshooters through a lens that most Gettysburg researchers tend to avoid: the battle as viewed from the perspective of squads and platoons.
Allen argues that the 2nd U.S. Sharpshooters (2nd U.S.S.S.) played an important—perhaps decisive—role in helping the Army of the Potomac win the battle. Several times, the Confederates came dangerously close to delivering a killing stroke to their Union foes. Perhaps no moment loomed larger than the July 2 assault delivered by Major General John B. Hood’s division against Little Round Top. As many enthusiasts know, this led to the famous confrontation between the 20th Maine and the 15th Alabama, one of the battle’s storied clashes.
In telling this tale, historians have too often ignored the marksmen of the 2nd U.S.S.S., who deployed southwest of Little Round Top. Numbering only 169 officers and men, the 2nd U.S.S.S. spent two hours delaying Hood’s arrival, purchasing precious time for the Army of the Potomac’s staff officers to bring Colonel Strong Vincent’s brigade (with the 20th Maine) into position. As Allen avers, “If one accepts that the 20th Maine ‘saved the day’ at Little Round Top,” then one must also accept “that the 2nd Sharpshooters saved the minutes that made saving the day possible.” (17)
Like a Perfect Hornet’s Nest makes useful contributions to Gettysburg’s historiography. It makes excellent use of a private photograph collection owned by Brian White, arguably the most diligent collector of U.S. Sharpshooter images. Allen also does well by unpacking the importance of Colonel Hiram Berdan’s reconnaissance to Pitzer’s Woods, reminding readers that Berdan’s engagement gave Major General Daniel Sickles the “reason he needed” to execute his controversial redeployment along the Emmitsburg Road. (56) Allen’s maps graft the movements of the 2nd U.S.S.S. expertly onto the battlefield’s southern end. Readers will not be confused about where the regiment started on July 2 and where it finished.
Like a Perfect Hornet’s Nest ends its story on the evening of July 2. Allen does not narrate the history of the 2nd U.S. Sharpshooters on July 3 or July 4, an odd omission given that Independence Day might be considered the bloodiest day of the battle for the 2nd U.S.S.S. (The regiment lost three men killed on July 4, a number that equaled those mortally wounded on July 2.)
Like a Perfect Hornet’s Nest’s most interesting contribution is its effort to unveil a mystery that has long bedeviled historians. In 1884, an officer from the 20th Maine, Captain Walter G. Morrill, wrote to Colonel Joshua Chamberlain, describing the movements of his company into the saddle between Little Round Top and Big Round Top. (This letter became part of The Bachelder Papers where it has since become a staple source for modern authors.) In it, Morrill mentioned consolidating his company with “twelve or fifteen” U.S. Sharpshooters under the command of a noncommissioned officer. The unidentified noncommissioned officer’s appearance, it could be argued, had consequential results. His timely arrival at Morrill’s position (which is nowadays indicated by a rarely visited marble marker) gave Morrill’s men the time they needed to take shelter before the rebels struck, which, in turn, shaped the course of the fighting on the Union left. Allen believes he has identified Morrill’s unnamed Sharpshooter NCO: Sergeant Grove Scribner.
Allen’s identification comes from blending two primary accounts, both from the 2nd U.S.S.S. After combining these testimonies with his sequence of maps, Allen’s identification of Scribner is quite convincing, and surely, there is no better contender for Morrill’s mysterious NCO. But a close reading of the two primary accounts reveals a small wrinkle. One account mentions Scribner’s presence near Little Round Top, but it does not mention the encounter with Morrill’s company. Meanwhile, the other account mentions Morrill’s company but not Scribner’s presence. By assuming these two writers stood in the same area, Allen makes a transitive deduction that Scribner must be Morrill’s unnamed Sharpshooter NCO. It’s a reasonable hypothesis, but Allen might have been more candid with his readers that Scribner’s identity should not be taken as a matter of certainty.
This leads to a larger concern. Overall, Like a Perfect Hornet’s Nest attempts to construct a type of military history that preceding generations of Gettysburg historians have rarely attempted: small unit action. Readers should recognize that Civil War veterans rarely, if ever, explained battles from the perspective of squads or platoons. To the majority of combat veterans, the movement of larger organizations—regiments, brigades, divisions, corps, and armies—mattered most. They considered small unit tactics inconsequential to the story of battles, even if we historians wish they did otherwise.
This point ought to have appeared in Allen’s book. Because soldiers often ignored the small scale, historians cannot know with full confidence where individual soldiers stood, nor when, exactly, they stood there. Memories of combat tended to be impressionistic rather than absolute, and mapping individual squads (or individual soldiers) onto the field with GPS-level accuracy requires a degree of guesswork. Allen owes it to his readers to describe the limitations of his sources, at least in brief. And he should do this not merely to be honest about them but also to underscore the difficulty he must have encountered doing research of this kind. Writing Like a Perfect Hornet’s Nest doubtless involved countless hours poring over maps and walking over some of the most rugged areas of the battlefield. It might seem counterintuitive, but by admitting a bit of uncertainty, Allen would have strengthened his readers’ confidence in his conclusions.
But in developing its main argument—that the 2nd U.S.S.S. vitally assisted the Army of the Potomac in securing Little Round Top—Like a Perfect Hornet’s Nest does an impeccable job. If battlefield explorers wish to walk in the footsteps of the 2nd U.S.S.S., they should have this book in their pocket.
Timothy Orr is associate professor of military history at Old Dominion University. He earned his PhD at the Richards Civil War Era Center at Pennsylvania State University. He is author/editor of Last to Leave the Field (2011) and co-author of Never Call Me a Hero (2017), as well as several essays about the Army of the Potomac. He is the book review editor for the Gettysburg Magazine and author of the blog Tales From the Army of the Potomac. For eight years, he worked as a seasonal ranger at Gettysburg National Military Park.
A neat review of Mr. Allen’s book. I have a niche interest in the 2nd US Sharpshooters, with much of my knowledge coming from Gerald Earley’s 2009 book. On February 3, 1865, the by then depleted unit learned that they were to be disbanded. Their last fight was at the battle of Hatcher’s Run (February 5-7, 1865), where they suffered one killed and two wounded on February 5, in securing the Hatcher’s Run crossing along Vaughan Road. Their last blood spilled in the war. The unit split up on February 16. It would be of interest to me to learn if Mr Allen’s knowledge of this Sharpshooter unit extended to February 1865. If it did, I would be happy to start up an email conversation.