One sharpshooter in particular made life miserable for the Rebels, an unusual fellow named Truman Head, but better known to his comrades as “California Joe” or “Old Californy.” Head, so the story went, had moved out West after a lover jilted him, then struck it rich in the gold fields. When the war began, the 52-year-old came back East, lied about his age—claiming to be 42—and joined Berdan’s men, carrying a Sharps rifle he had bought with his own money. Since he had no family, Head had left $50,000 in a trust for the care of Union soldiers in case he was killed.

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California Joe was well liked and highly respected by his comrades, and his name appears in many sharpshooter accounts of Yorktown. One marksman remembered that slaves who had escaped from the Confederate lines told of a day of slaughter on April 5, when “out of a whole company that worked the guns in a battery near the peach orchard…only 12 were fit for duty the next morning. It was on that occasion that ‘Old Californy’ did such splendid service.”

Confederate artillerymen from other parts of the line soon began targeting Berdan’s men, and the sharpshooters also attracted the attention of increasing numbers of Confederate skirmishers and marksmen, resulting in casualties. When a shot supposedly fired by a Southern soldier ensconced high in a tree killed a private from Berdan’s New Hampshire company, Colonel Ripley took matters into his own hands. Several accounts claim that Ripley advanced out to the location and picked up the dead man’s rifle. Adjusting the scope and taking careful aim at the adversary in the treetop, he pulled the trigger. Whether the colonel actually killed the enemy soldier was unknown, but no more shots came from that tree.

A little after 9 that night, the men of the 1st U.S.S.S. were relieved and retired to the woods in the rear. During their first day of combat, they had suffered three killed and six wounded.

McClellan’s army began examining and probing the enemy defenses at Yorktown. The works seemed strong, and McClellan decided the best course of action would be a siege operation. For the next four weeks the sharpshooters would play an important role in those efforts—picking off enemy artillerymen, dealing with Southern sharpshooters, guarding the fatigue details digging trenches and earthworks, engaging the enemy from the closest line of trenches and bolstering the picket lines.

Although those tasks exposed Berdan’s men to more danger, they realized that being a sharpshooter had its benefits. For one thing, they were exempted from fatigue duty. One of the men noted that made them feel like “privileged characters.”

As the work details continued their efforts, encircling and then moving the line of trenches closer to the enemy’s, the sharpshooters were instructed not to engage the Confederates unless presented with a sure shot. This was especially important when guarding a fatigue detail, as they did not want to draw return fire on the workmen. But whenever they had the opportunity the sharpshooters were to gun down cannoneers, in an effort to suppress enemy artillery fire.

“Gun after gun was silenced and abandoned…every embrasure within range of a thousand yards was silent,” Colonel Ripley proudly wrote of their efforts, adding that Berdan’s men also suppressed Rebel small-arms fire. “The rebel infantry,” he wrote, “which at first responded with a vigorous fire, found that exposure of a head meant grave danger, if not death.”

As Ripley stated, deadly shots from the sharpshooters made manning the Confederate defenses dangerous work. In response, it seems some Southern troops then resorted to a desperate tactic. “They forced their negroes to load their cannon,” an officer in the 1st U.S.S.S. sadly noted. “They shot them if they would not load the cannon, and we shot them if they did.”

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