Doyle,

I agree with you, and that is always the way I construed the wording of the order. At that particular point in time, many regiments were lucky if they could just arm their flank companies with the rifled musket.

Even newly organized North Carolina regiments in the summer of 1862 were having difficulty being armed. Only a shipment from a blockade runner into Wilmington alleviated their problem.

The situation was even worse the further regiments were from ports such as Wilmington.

It seems that the use of sharpshooters as what we know as snipers increased in usage as the war progressed beyond 1862. And even then, these were individual marksmen and not so much entire battalions.

Even though qualified, I had the good fortune of not being assigned as a sniper---"back in the day."