A collection of bedtime stories - or sharpshooter & sniper tales

Jack Hinson

I just today discovered this thread. I will eventually read all of it because it is so interesting. I did a search for and quotes about Jack Hinson (since he was from my stomping grounds), but found only one reference about the book on him. I'm not a typist, so operating a keyboard is tedious and frustrating (I try to correct my mis-types). But in this post and following ones I'll give you all some interesting quotes from Tom C. McKenney's "Jack Hinson's One-Man War".

p.166: ...his favorite vantage point... would be in southwest Stewart County, a high and rugged bluff overlooking the Tennessee River at the mouth of Hurricane Creek. From there...he would exact a terrible toll on men and morale aboard Grant's gunboats and transports.

p.176: The rifle...had a full stock...made of tiger maple. The unusually heavy, octagonal barrel was 41 inches long from muzzle to tang, nearly 1.5 inches in outside diameter, and bored to .50 caliber. ... Jack's new rifle weighed eighteen pounds.

Hinson's first two targets were the Union lieutenant and sergeant who had executed and beheaded his two sons. He dispatched them in short-range ambushes on separate occasions. Personal vendetta fed, he began his methodical long-range sniping of Union river traffic.

p. 254: The thing that made his firing point perfect was the location of the river's channel... The passage was narrow, close in, and the current was both swift and powerful. Southbound boats not only had to pass right under Jack's bluff, but they moved...so slowly as to be almost stationary targets.

Jack Hinson 2

I'm continuing some excerpts from Tom C. McKenney's "Jack Hinson's One-Man War".

Perched in his bluff hideout, Hinson observed a US Navy gunboat straining to make headway against the current running through the "chute".

p. 256: There was no wind; the range was about six hundred yards..... Before the report of the rifle reached the boat, the captain was slammed to his knees...

On another day, Hinson targeted a transport carrying a company of infantry troops. He chose the most senior man on the deck. His bullet struck the captain in the left-center chest, passed through him, and buried itself in a lieutenant's leg. On page 266, he again shoots a Union officer on another Union boat.

The book continues on recounting several more sniping situations, giving ample time to the event where Hinson made several kills on a heavily-laden Union cargo ship.

p. 297: From high above, Jack Hinson wondered if his old eyes were playing tricks on him...the captain had surrendered his boat - to him. He had captured the boat, complete with cargo, deck guns, surviving crew, and the embarked infantry unit, weapons and all. although the captain didn't realize it, he had placed his entire ship at the feet of one amazed old man.

I'm done with typing for now. I highly recommend this book. It is an easy read, is interesting, and might influence someone to make a reproduction of Jack Hinson's rifle.

THR rocks.

The book says Minie, Hinson having a mold that was made with the gun.

Gary,

Are you using "talk -speak" or something that is adding those periods?

-kBob

4v50 Gary said:

Here is a well written article on sharpshooters and sharpshooting that is partially based on my research.

http://www.civilwarindex.com/armyin/soldiers/23rd_in_infantry_soldiers.pdf

Click to expand...

Gary - I think you may have posted the wrong link....

can you pin this to the top so we don't have to search for it?

murf

bump

Mike Irwin said:

On the contrary, Gary, I HIGHLY recommend a trip to Cairo, if for no other reason than to stand at the point where the Mississippi and Missouri Rivers come together.

The town has some very interesting old architecture, as well, and it's neat to watch the river traffic go by.

I've read some of the contemporary descriptions of Cairo back when it was a very busy river port. It must have been something else.

Let me know when you'll be in town and I'll try to arrange my schedule this time.

Click to expand...

I think you mean where the Ohio and Mississippi come together.

John W. “Jack” Hinson, better known as “Old Jack” to his family, was a prosperous farmer in Stewart County, Tennessee. A non-political man, he opposed secession from the Union even though he owned slaves. Friends and neighbors described him as a peaceable man, yet despite all this, he would end up going on a one-man killing spree.

Even when one of their sons joined the Confederate Army, while another joined a militia group, Jack remained strictly neutral. They were content to manage their plantation despite the ongoing conflict.

Since many in the region were sympathetic to the Confederacy, some turned to guerrilla tactics to deal with the better armed and trained Union soldiers. These were called bushwhackers, because they hid in the woods where they could attack Union troops before fading back into the wild.

In the fall of 1862, Jack’s 22-year-old son George Hinson, and his 17-year-old brother, Jack, went deer hunting about a mile from their home as they always did. Unfortunately, they came across a Union patrol who suspected them of being bushwhackers.

The boys were tied to a tree then shot, after which their bodies were dragged back to town. There the corpses were paraded around the Dover courthouse square as an example of the Union’s zero-tolerance policy toward resistance. The remains were then decapitated and left there, while the heads were brought to the Hinson plantation.

Before the entire family, the heads were stuck on two gate posts as an example of Union justice. The lieutenant in charge wanted to arrest the Hinsons for their relationship to the two alleged bushwhackers but was informed about Grant’s stay on the property. He was also told that the major general would not take kindly to any mistreatment of the surviving Hinsons, so they were left alone.

Of Scottish-Irish descent, Jack could not let the murders of his sons go unpunished. He buried his children’s remains, then sent the rest of his family and slaves to West Tennessee to stay with relatives.

He then commissioned a special 0.50 caliber rifle with a percussion-cap muzzle-loader. Besides its lack of decorative brass ornamentation, this rifle was also unique because it had a 41” long octagonal barrel that weighed 17 pounds. The length of the barrel ensured that he could accurately hit targets from half a mile away.

As to the octagonal shape, it was based on the Whitworth Rifle. With its hexagonal barrel, it could shoot farther (2,000 yards) and more accurately than the Pattern 1853 Enfield (1,400 yards) with its traditional round rifled barrel.

Moving into a cave above the Tennessee River, Jack became a bushwhacker at the age of 57.

His first target was the lieutenant who ordered his sons shot and beheaded. The man was killed as he rode in front of his column. The second target was the soldier who placed the heads on the gateposts. It didn’t take the Union long to connect the dots, so they burned down the abandoned Hinson plantation.

The most spectacular story of his sniping career was when an entire boat of Union soldiers surrendered to him. After Jack fired on the boat, the captain thought he was being attacked by Confederate soldiers. To avoid further bloodshed, the captain beached his boat, raised a white tablecloth, and waited to be captured. But Jack couldn’t possibly handle them all, so he retreated and let them wait.

Another sharpshooter, though not a user of a black powder firearm:
Simo "Simuna" Häyhä (Finnish pronunciation: [ˈsimo̞ ˈhæy̯ɦæ]; 17 December 1905 – 1 April 2002), nicknamed "White Death" (Russian: Белая смерть, Belaja smert; Finnish: valkoinen kuolema; Swedish: den vita döden) by the Red Army,[2] was a Finnish sniper. Using a Finnish-produced M/28-30 rifle (a variant of the Mosin–Nagant rifle) and a Suomi KP/-31, he reportedly killed 505 men (according to other sources he is credited with 542) during the 1939–40 Winter War, the highest recorded number of sniper kills in any major war.[3][4][5] Häyhä estimated in his diary that he killed more than five hundred Red Army soldiers in the Winter War.[6] Antti Rantama (Häyhä's unit military chaplain) credited Häyhä with 259 confirmed sniper kills and an equal number of kills by machine/submachine gun during the Winter War.[7]

4v50 Gary said:

@murf - go to the second post of Black Powder Essentials and you'll find a link.

Click to expand...

thx,

murf

Monument to the Angel of Marye's Heights
The Kirkland Monument remembers a selfless Civil War hero who braved the battlefield to give water to his dying enemies. --->>> https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/monument-to-the-angel-of-marye-s-heights

"War Chicken

There has been a lot written about General Robert E. Lee, from his unflawed character, his deep conviction and noble leader to him being a traitor.
There is no doubt that Lee has left an indelible mark on America.

While there are many tales to tell of General Lee’s life, one that provides a little chuckle is the story of his “pet” hen Nellie.
Nellie was a black hen that Lee acquired at Petersburg.
The story is relayed by his body servant, William Mack Lee, of how Nellie would daily lay an egg every morning and how fond the general was of Nellie.

But on July 3, 1863 William stated that, “we was all so hongry and I didn't have nuffin in ter cook, dat I was jes' plumb bumfuzzled” and
determined there wasn’t enough to feed all the generals on hand, so he went and cooked up Nellie.
The general was not pleased.
According to William, this was the first, and only time Lee scolded him.
Will said that,

"Marse Robert kep' on scoldin' me mout dat hen.
He never scolded 'bout naything else.
He tol' me I was a fool to kill de her whut lay de golden egg.
Hit made Marse Robert awful sad ter think of anything bein' killed, whedder der 'twas one of his soljers, or his little black hen." " --->>> https://owlcation.com/humanities/10-Little-Known-Facts-About-the-US-Civil-War

Found a copy of your first book on Amazon and bought it. There’s one more on there, but I’m not paying almost $600 for it!