Put simply, the modern criticisms of the militia stem from a fundamental misunderstanding of the nature of 18th-century marksmanship and musketry. The error is compounded by unfavorably comparing yesteryear’s standards to those of today, a categorical mistake that is like complaining how on a racetrack the Model T Ford cannot even keep pace against the latest Ferrari.

Today, a military-grade rifle, such as the FN SCAR, will group five shots at 100 yards within a 1.29-inch circle. Then, however, the British officially believed that shooters were exhibiting a “high degree of precision” when one of every five or six rounds from a Brown Bess musket hit a three-foot wide target at that distance. In other words, when at least 80 percent of their shots missed a yard-wide bullseye at what was regarded as the optimal combat range, contemporaries praised such performance as extraordinarily good. It is against this standard, not the FN SCAR’s, that we must contrast American marksmanship.

There are many reasons for this relatively poor performance. Essentially, it was exceedingly difficult to hit the same specific place more than once with any predictability. Muskets were each hand-made, entailing that one was not identical to another—even when manufactured by the same gunsmith. Quality of construction, the type of wood and iron, the length of the barrel, the placement of the sights, the tightness of the screws, the solidity of the firing mechanism, the pull of the trigger and the weight of the gun: All varied immensely and all exerted an influence on performance.

So too was there no universal standard for gunpowder and projectiles. Different weights and faulty casting (which caused air pockets in the lead) made it impossible to predict how far the ball would fly and along which particular vector, as did improper measuring and mixing of the powder.

Moreover, in order to ease loading, the barrel’s bore was larger than the ball, meaning that when the gun was fired, the projectile would exit erratically from the point of last contact at the muzzle.

All things considered, then, even if one’s last shot hit the target square on, there was no guarantee that the next would not end up three feet away. As a saying sorrowfully beloved of musketmen went, “One went high, one went low, and where in Hell did the other one go?”

American shooting, however, somewhat overcame these disadvantages by dint of long experience, a lot of practice, and personal knowledge of a gun’s idiosyncrasies. Thus, during target practice Capt. Samuel Stockbridge (according to Litchfield) calmly “shot at a mark about 12 or 14 rods [about 70 yards away] and hit it exactly within an inch.” He, like Litchfield, knew every inch of his gun.

Stockbridge’s talents were evidently not uncommon. Licking their wounds, the British were staggered by the relative precision of American shooters. Sergeant Roger Lamb of the Fusiliers judged that “the generality of the Americans were good marksmen; the whole of their previous military knowledge had been derived from hunting, and the ordinary amusements of sportsmen. The dexterity which by long habit they had acquired in hitting beasts, birds, and marks, was fatally applied” during 1775.

Accordingly, at the Battle of Bunker Hill, American commanders were so confident in their troops’ marksmanship that “every platoon officer was engaged in discharging his own musket and left his men to fire as they pleased,” trusting them not to waste their shots. Which was why, as veteran Henry Dearborn recalled, his comrades never fired “without a sure aim at some particular object.”

That “particular object” happened to be enemy officers, the intention being to disrupt and demoralize the foe. Colonel Prescott—who was defending the redoubt from British assaults—ordered his militiamen to “take particular notice of the fine coats” and concentrate on them. They must have, for after the battle the British noticed that among their hit officers “few had less than three or four wounds,” indicating that each was the reluctant subject of several Americans’ attention. Only men who could be counted on to hit their targets would be granted the leeway to aim at individuals rather than firing into the mass. Indeed, at Bunker Hill, every one of the 12 staff officers escorting the British commander Gen. Howe was either killed or wounded.

Anecdotally, then, it is clear that the Americans were deemed to be fine shots. But is there any statistical evidence of this fact? To a degree, yes. Let us assume that there were, as the most authoritative estimates have it, 3,500 Americans at Bunker Hill, each of whom began the battle with his official allotment of 15 rounds. As we know that the powder and ball more-or-less ran out near the end, we can posit that the militiamen expended 52,500 shots (3,500 men multiplied by 15 rounds each).

Almost certainly this figure is too high—not every man fired half as many times—but some militiamen fired much more often than that using extra rounds brought from home, scavenged from the wounded, or borrowed from a friend. So, for the sake of simplicity, we can accept these two factors as canceling each other out.

The British totaled up their casualties as 228 killed and 826 wounded, or 1,054 in total. Dividing the number of casualties by the number of shots needed to inflict them gives us a ratio of one for every 50 rounds. Expressed differently, two percent of the Americans’ shots hit the enemy.

On the face of it, that may not sound too impressive, let alone provide evidence of superior marksmanship, but comparatively speaking, it was a truly remarkable performance. If we take the average estimate of seven 18th- and 19th-century European military experts of how many balls hit their targets in battles during this period, we arrive at a figure of 0.17 percent, or fewer than one out of every 500 fired. Sir Richard Henegan, for instance, a senior officer serving under the Duke of Wellington during the Napoleonic Wars, calculated that just one out of every 459 British bullets hit an enemy soldier at the 1813 Battle of Vittoria.

Extrapolating from the 0.17-percent average, we can surmise that the Americans were nearly 12 times as effective at hitting their foe than British or European soldiers. Even if we accept Christopher Ward’s censorious—and heavily flawed—computation of one hit in 300 (0.33 percent) at Lexington/Concord, militia marksmanship was still twice as good as that of the Redcoats.

Militiamen were not perfect. They were citizen short-term irregulars, not long-service professional troops, and they neither took orders kindly nor could face an infantry assault in the open field. But in 1775 they did know how to shoot. Given their achievements, it is time, surely, to stop heaping calumnies upon their heads and take to heart instead the advice given by the Revolutionary soldier Col. Grayson. He likened the boys of Lexington and Bunker Hill to the “price of a wife: Be to their faults a little blind, And to their virtues very kind.”

Alexander Rose is the author of American Rifle: A Biography and Washington’s Spies: The Story of America’s First Spy Ring. His website is www.alexrose.com.