Historian Pat O'Donnell on the Continental Army's First Rifle Companies

The Team House sits down with historian Pat O'Donnell to talk about his new book, Revolutionary Snipers, the third in his trilogy on American Revolution special operations. The conversation traces the Continental Army's original rifle companies, authorized by Congress in June 1775, and the frontiersmen who filled their ranks.

Key points

• Origins: O'Donnell explains that Congress formed 10 rifle companies in 1775, the first members of the Continental Army, drawn from frontiersmen and long hunters skilled in woodcraft and scouting.
• The weapon: These marksmen carried the Pennsylvania long rifle, nicknamed the Widowmaker, a Lancaster-area refinement of European designs that could hit targets at three or four hundred yards versus a musket's roughly 50-yard accuracy.
• Masking a crisis: O'Donnell describes how Washington used these riflemen to cover a severe gunpowder shortage outside Boston, keeping British troops pinned down while the Continental Army's cartridge boxes sat nearly empty.
• Discipline problems: The riflemen's special privileges bred resentment, O'Donnell notes, including a mutiny by a Pennsylvania company that Washington crushed before sending offenders on a grueling expedition.
• The march to Quebec: O'Donnell recounts Benedict Arnold's disastrous wilderness route to Quebec, meant to be 100 miles but stretching to roughly 350, with starving men reduced to boiling leather gear.

Quick take

In O'Donnell's telling, the rifle companies mattered to Washington both for their long-range shooting and for the cover they gave him during the powder shortage at Boston, even as their privileges caused friction in the ranks.

Watch the full video: The Team House