6/15/2010 Painting by Don Troiani

Some historians have perpetuated myths about the men and guns of the American Revolution, taking aim at American marksmanship. But recent scholarship shows that the citizen soldiers who fought at the Battle of Bunker Hill were far better shots than the “professional” British soldiers who faced them. Just how good were they? Read on.

A now forgotten Prussian artillerist of the 19th century, one Col. Schlimmbach, devoted many beetle-browed hours to calculating precisely that during the Napoleonic Wars (c.1799-1815) the enemy needed to fire “a man’s own weight” in bullets before scoring a hit. Assuming, then, that he survived both disease and cannon shot, the typical soldier who fought in just a few battles could be fairly certain of enjoying a peaceful, pensioned retirement.

The same could not be said for those British troops fighting the American militia in the early stages of the War of Independence. They stood a dismayingly good chance of being shot by the end of a single engagement. The marksmanship of the American fighting man has a long and storied tradition in our nation’s history. Since the Revolutionary era, Americans have assumed that they are, shot for shot, the finest marksmen on the planet.

It was only in the decade preceding World War II that the “myth” of American marksmanship first received incoming fire from historians, especially as it pertained to the War of Independence—the hammer and anvil of the American character. In 1934, Allen French’s otherwise magisterial The First Year of the American Revolution claimed that owing to “poor American guns, and the men’s lack of practice ... too much has been made of American marksmanship” in the critical year of 1775, when the militia fought at Lexington/Concord and Bunker Hill.

French’s dismissal of American expertise was echoed by Christopher Ward in his popular War of the Revolution of 1952. He concluded that at Lexington/Concord, “only one bullet out of 300 found its mark,” so demonstrating “the fallaciousness of the belief so often expressed that the Yankees were superior marksmen, dead shots in fact.”

Through time, this once-radical view has become conventional wisdom, even among the most painstaking of historians. In his detailed Battle of Bunker’s Hill (1975) John Elting went so far as to assert that “at best the average New Englander [in 1775] ... could load and fire a musket with a fair chance of hitting an easy target at short range. But this made him probably as good a shot as the average French or Prussian veteran.”

More recently, Michael Stephenson’s Patriot Battles (2007) asserted that in 1775 the militia were “indifferent shots when one considers the number of militia involved, the time available to them, the vulnerability of the target, and the relatively low ratio of British casualties to the shots fired.”

Now, good history-writing hinges on debate and reinterpretation, but in this case political axe-grinding has begun to intrude. Michael Bellesiles, a Second Amendment critic whose best-selling manifesto, Arming America, has been severely discredited for a multitude of sins, argued that “a total of 3,763 Americans are known to have participated [at Lexington]. Not all of them held guns, and not all fired, but among them they hit 273 British. Expert marksmanship requires training, good equipment, and a regular supply of ammunition for practice. These farmers rarely practiced, generally had no ammunition, and owned old muskets, not rifles, if they owned a gun at all.” The implication is that “these farmers” could not hit their own barndoors, such atrocious shots were they.

Before moving on to the real meat of the matter—the issue of marksmanship—let’s clear up a few errors in the conventional wisdom. First, the American militiamen were not “out of practice” in the lead-up to war. From the fall of 1774 onward, most New England militia companies were assembling for serious target practice at least twice and more often thrice a week. If anything, it was the British who rarely practiced. Lieutenant Williams of the 23rd Regiment caustically observed that his troops “foolishly imagine that when danger is feared they [should] secure themselves by discharging their muskets, with or without aim.” As late as three days before Bunker Hill, most British infantrymen still had not been taught how to “fire ball,” take aim, and stand properly, let alone been put through target practice.

What about the “old” and “poor” American guns? Absolutely, the muskets they brought to the fight had seen better days. One veteran remembered, “Here an old soldier carried a heavy Queen’s arm, with which he had done service at the conquest of Canada twenty years previous, while by his side walked a stripling boy, with a Spanish fuzee not half its weight or calibre, which his grandfather may have taken at the Havana [1762], while not a few had old French pieces, that dated back to the reduction of Louisburg [1758].”

Yet the antiquity of the militiamen’s pieces should not obscure their lethality. These were working, effective, well-maintained arms. In an era when guns were expensive and difficult to make it was common for even regular soldiers to use hand-me-downs. The British, for instance, were using muskets—still perfectly serviceable—dating as far back as 1742. It is not the gun that matters, we should remember, but the man behind it, and in 1775 the American militias were packed with veterans blooded in the French and Indian War (1754-1763) and boasting plenty of firefights (and scalps) under their belts. These were hard men who knew their business, not green innocents plucked from the fields panicked into firing harmlessly into the air.

As for not owning guns in the first place, this claim too can be discounted. Virtually every man at Lexington/Concord and Bunker Hill brought a firearm. Deducing exact figures for gun ownership in 1775 is extremely difficult. However, an analysis of the returns of 30 New England militia companies finds that the overall rate of private ownership was about 75 percent, and probably significantly higher. Any man who wished to fight either carried his own gun, used one provided by his township or, in a pinch, borrowed a piece from a neighbor.

Their “unfamiliarity” with shoulder arms is another baseless myth. The militias’ arms were treasured tools used every day for hunting and protection. Israel Litchfield, a Massachusetts militiaman, keenly maintained his musket and its accoutrements. According to his diary, he prepared for the worst on March 10, 1775, when he “scoured up my gun” to clear the fouling in the barrel (from shooting at targets) before taking it to Hezekiah Hutson, the local gunsmith, to “put in a new main-spring into my lock.” On March 21, Litchfield fine-tuned the amount of gunpowder he needed to be effective at 100 yards by spending the whole day “cleaning the lock and fixing her. After I had cleaned and oiled the lock I put in a good flint and tried her to burn three corns [grains] of powder. I cocked her and snapped and she burned them. I told out just three corns and tried her again and she burned it so I tried her eleven times successfully and she burnt three corns of powder every time and did not miss. The 12th time she missed them but I overhauled and cocked her and she burnt them the next time.”

These are not the actions of a man unfamiliar with firearms. But did he and his brethren know how to use them accurately? It is undoubtedly true that not all the Americans were “dead shots,” in Ward’s words, but a significant number were highly proficient shooters by the standards of the time.