So far our sharpshooters have supplied us with the greater part of the romance of this war. During Garibaldi’s Italian campaign the adventures and exploits of a sharpshooting Englishman who went about, with all the sang froid of a sportsman, picking off the Austrians with his unerring rifle, attracted a great deal of attention and interest. We have three thousand such sharpshooters in the field now, and the people read with avidity the tales of such men as California Joe, who brought down the rebel negro rifleman, and of Old Seth, who captured a rebel gun by shooting down all the gunners as fast as they showed themselves. Cooper’s sensation novels of forest life have no such stirring scenes and incidents as those daily recorded in our columns of the Berdan sharpshooters.
The New York Herald, New York, NY