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Battlefield Sniper: Over 100 Civil War Kills

by Lt. Col. Tom McKenney, Pen and Sword, 2010, $40.48

Born in North Carolina in July 1807, John C. Hinson moved to Kentucky as a young man and became a landowner in Bubbling Springs. The area in which he lived, locally called “Between the Rivers” has since disappeared with the building of hydroelectric dams, but in his day its isolation bred tough, independent-minded inhabitants. Hinson was not a secessionist—in fact, when war broke out he liberated his slaves and helped Brig. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant to achieve his important victory at Fort Donelson. Soon after that, however, a Union patrol arrested two of his sons, George and John, on a charge of being Confederate guerrillas or bushwhackers, summarily decapitating them and putting their heads on the gateposts of the family estate. At that point “Old Jack” Hinson swore revenge against their killers. Armed with a long-barrel .50-caliber rifle, he spread death among the Union Army and Navy alike in a one-man guerrilla war.

One of Hinson’s greatest successes was to force a Union Army river transport vessel to surrender after unerringly picking off its personnel. Another occurred on November 3, 1864, when he participated in Nathan Bedford Forrest’s attack on Johnsonville, which Maj. Gen. William T. Sherman called “a feat of arms which I must confess, excited my admiration.”

Tom McKenney, a former U.S. Marine paratrooper who served in Korea and Vietnam before writing numerous historical articles, spent 15 years researching Hinson’s life and exploits for Battlefield Sniper. The result is a fresh look at an almost forgotten facet of Civil War history—a study of one of the South’s deadliest guerrillas, as well as the family that motivated his actions. Additionally, the author believes that another of Hinson’s sons, Robert, was responsible for the wound that Virgil Earp, then serving in the 83rd Illinois Infantry, suffered at Fort Donelson, and that his wife, Elizabeth, was a cousin of Jesse James.

Hinson survived the war and started a new life near the village of Magnolia, where he died in July 1874 at the age of 67. His rifle, which he presented to Forrest, later came into the possession of Judge Ben Hall McFarlin of Murfreesboro, Tenn. One can still make out 36 circles on it, each representing a kill.

 

Originally published in the September 2010 issue of America’s Civil War. To subscribe, click here