Thanks for the link. Here's an excerpt from that Chapter on the Sharpshooters. Of particular interest is the shooting qualification test for applicants to the regiment, in the last paragraph below.
[Excerpt from Chapter XXX: The Sharpshooters.]
(P.731-32)
“…The organization of the United States Sharpshooters as a distinct branch of the service, was due to Hiram Berdan of New York. Impressed by the need of skilled shots, armed with long-range rifles, to meet the marksmen so numerous in the Confederate ranks, he called the attention of the War Department to the subject. The result was the commissioning of Mr. Berdan as a colonel, and the enlistment in the first year of the war, under the direct authority of the government, of two regiments of sharpshooters. The eighteen companies comprised in these regiments were recruited in the States of Maine, Michigan, Minnesota, New Hampshire, New York, Pennsylvania, Vermont and Wisconsin.
Of the total number, the Green Mountain State furnished more that one-sixth—more in proportion to population than any other State—sending into the ranks of these regiments not less than six hundred and twenty superior marksmen, and furnishing two lieutenant colonels and a number of other officers to the commands. The sharpshooters were men of superior spirit and endurance, as well as skill.
The lists of their killed and wounded, which far exceeded the general ratio of the army, indicate the danger and severity of their duty. They took part in almost every important battle fought by the Army of the Potomac. Their officers made few reports. Fighting commonly in detachments, the credit for what they accomplished was usually appropriated by the larger organizations to which they were attached. Yet it is safe to say that the service they rendered was second in value to that of no other equal number of enlisted men who took part in the war for the Union; and the writer of these pages deeply regrets the necessity, imposed on him by the limits of this volume, which compels him to condense their brilliant record into such small compass.
The conditions for enlistment required that each recruit should, in a public trial, firing from the shoulder and without telescopic sights, in ten shots place ten bullets within a ten-inch ring, at a distance of 200 yards; and this test was rigidly exacted. The uniform was distinctive, being of green cloth, to harmonize with the colors of nature, with leather leggings and knapsacks of leather tanned with the hair on. Most of the men took out their own rifles, which before they took the field were exchanged for Colt's revolving rifles, and later for a better arm.”
Source: Benedict, George Grenville. Vermont in the Civil War. Burlington VT: Free Press Association, 1888.