Excerpt from Martin T. McMahon, Brevet Major General
On May 8th, 1864, the Sixth Corps made a rapid march to the support of Warren, near Spotsylvania Court House at about 5 P.M., and the remainder of the day was getting into position on Warren’s left. The following morning General Sedgwick moved out upon his line of battle.
General Sedgwick’s directed the artillery to be withdrawn through a little opening to the left of the pieces of artillery. The troops had been filing from the left into the rifle-pits, had come to a position that partly overlapped the position of the artillery. Once he saw this he wanted the troops moved farther to the right, he didn’t want them to overlap the battery. General McMahon pointed out and mentioned to the General about that section of artillery, that he shouldn’t go there. He told the General every officer who has shown himself there has been hit, both yesterday and to-day. He answered back saying there is no reason for me to go there. And then after the conversation both walked over to the position they had just talked about.
Once there the order was given to move the troops to the right, and as they rose to execute the movement. The enemy opened a sprinkling fire, partly from sharp-shooters. Bullets whistled by, and some of the men dodged. The general said laughingly, "What! what! men, dodging this way for single bullets! What will you do when they open fire along the whole line? I am ashamed of you. They couldn’t hit an elephant at this distance." A few seconds after, a soldier passed directly in front of the general, and at the same moment a sharp-shooter’s bullet passed with a long shrill whistle very close, and the soldier dodged to the ground. The general said, "Why, my man, I am ashamed of you, dodging that way," and repeated the remark "They couldn't hit an elephant at this distance." The man rose and saluted, and said good-naturedly, "General, I dodged a shell once, and if I hadn't, it would have taken my head off. I believe in dodging." The general laughed and replied, ‘‘All right, my man; go to your place."
For a third time the enemy fired, however this time the general was hit with a round to his left cheek under the eye. He fell and a smile remained upon his lips but he did not speak.
General Ricketts, next in command, declined the assumption of command of the Corps and per the wishes of Gen. Sedgwick before he had died wanted Gen. Horatio G Wright of the Third Division to be in command. General Meade had already heard the about the death, and issued the order placing General Wright in command.
The Confederate side had the 4th Georgian Infantry. Often, sharpshooters on both sides would trade shots back and forth trying to hit each other. At times there was no action going on. On the confederate side they had the:
The Whitworth rifle
The Whitworth rifle was of British manufacture and was used primarily by the Confederate army. It was a muzzle-loading weapon with a 33 inch barrel (49 inches overall) and a .451 inch bore. What made this rifle so popular in the South was its remarkable accuracy. Its long range precision was the best of all weapons used in the war. When the telescopic sight was used, the rifle had an effective range of about 1,800 yards. Most history books say that the round that killed Gen Sedgwick was fired from just over 500yds but other speculate that it was fired from more than 1000yds. This rifle, as with the cannon which the English company also made, had a hexagonal bore which required a hexagonal bullet. Both sides called this bullet a "bolt". In fact, it was a six-sided bolt from a Rebel sharpshooter that killed Union General "Uncle John" Sedgwick.
As it says on the plaque 5 soldiers claim to have fired the shot that killed Gen Sedgwick. However after some research I found two articles that help explain what most people think happened. Benjamin M. Powell is the person that most people believe killed Gen Sedgwick
The first:
Excerpt from letter to his wife
While a member of the 12th Reg., I was offered a lieutenant twice but declined the honor. At the battle of Second Manassas Col. Barnes placed me in command of the Infirmary Corps in which capacity I served until a few days before the battle of Gettysburg when I was presented with a long-range Whitworth rifle with a telescope and globe sights and with a roving commission as an independent sharpshooter and scout. This rifle killed Gen. Sedgwick at Spotsylvania Court House.
The second piece I have is an article from a friend of Ben Powell, Berry Benson. It was published about 50 years after the war in 1917 in the Augusta Chronicle
Article from “The Augusta Chronicle," Augusta, Georgia, November 25, 1917:
About 10 o'clock in the morning of the 9th of May, 1864, three days after the battle of the Wilderness, and three days before the battle of the Bloody Angle, Major-General John Sedgwick, commanding the sixth corps of Grant's Army, was killed, near Spotsylvania, by a single shot from a Confederate sharpshooter, over a half mile distant. History thus records, but history does not record who fired the fatal shot. Nor is it generally known, but we of the battalion of sharpshooters of McGowan's South Carolina Brigade, of which I was first sergeant, knew.
The arm of the Confederate infantry was of two kinds, the Enfield rifle, the regulation British Army rifle, imported from England by running the blockade, and the Springfield rifle, the regulation United States Army rifle, captured by us in battle. These two guns, both muzzle-loading, were of the same caliber, and the cartridges of each fitted the other. There were some differences in the make-up of the cartridges; we of the sharpshooters preferred the English cartridge.
Along with the Enfields from England came also a small supply of Whitworth rifles, a long, heavy gun of small bore, made for sharp shooting at long range. This gun carried a small telescope on the top of the barrel, through which to sight - the hind sight (within the telescope) was a cross of two fine metal threads.
In the distribution to Lee's Army of these Whitworth rifles two fell to our brigade; one a walnut stock, was given to Ben Powell, and one, an oak stock, to a young fellow of Edgefield district, named Cheatham. Both of these men were excellent shots, and they now became independent sharpshooters, to go where they pleased. And carry on war at their own sweet will.
I do not remember that I ever fired either of these rifles, but my younger brother, Blackwood, a corporal in the sharpshooters with me, has sometimes fired Powell's. Once, in the trenches at Petersburg, Powell let him shoot it; the enemy camp was quite over a mile distant; my brother raised the gun at its highest elevation and fired at random. It was too far and enemy objects too obscure to note any effect, but some little time afterward we got hold of a New York paper and in this paper was news from the camps that on that day two men were killed at a well by a shot that came from an unknown where no report was heard.
Powell enjoyed being around the main body of sharpshooters a good deal and sometimes I would take him with me on a scout patrol. Not infrequently Powell would have a duel with a Yankee sharpshooter and usually Powell got the best of it. But one morning he came to us with a bullet hole through his hat. A Yankee sharpshooter had done it. “Well Ben,” we asked, "did you get him?" "No, I didn't" say Ben very frankly, "he kept picking closer and closer to me, and when he put the bullet through my hat, I quit."
On the 9th of May, Ben came in about noon and walking up to me, he said:
"Sergeant, I got a big Yankee officer this morning."
"How do you know it was an officer?" I asked. "I could tell by the way they behaved; they were all mounted; it was something over half a mile; I could see them good through the telescope; I could tell by the way they acted which was the head man; so I raised my sights and took the chance; and, sir, he tumbled right off his horse. The others dismounted and carried him away. I could see it all good through the glass." "Oh Ben," I said, "you shot some cavalryman, and you think it was an officer." "No, sir, he was an officer and a big one too. I could tell."
That night the enemy's pickets called over to ours: "Johnny, one of your sharpshooters killed General Sedgwick today." So we knew that Ben did what he said. 