The Palmetto Sharpshooters adopted the name "Sharpshooters" when the unit was organized in the spring of 1862, but they were not especially armed as sharpshooters, nor does it appear that they received any specialized training as snipers or the like. Throughout the war they were attached to Micah Jenkins' Brigade (commanded by John Bratton for the last year of the war, when the most seriosu of their fighting was done). While I have not specifically studied the brigade during the Overland Campaign of May-June 1864, for the rest of the war they were used in exactly the same manner as the other regiments of the brigade.

The PSS took their normal rotation as skirmishers for the brigade, and I can find no evidence whatsoever that they were specially assigned as skirmishers or scouts, nor were they assinged as "shock troops." The term "Sharpshooters" for this unit is one purely of nomenclature, not of any especial skill or lack thereof. There were a few true sharpshooter units of battalion or regimental size during the war -- Brendan's Sharpshooters and the Sharpshooter battalion formed from McGowan's Brigade during 1864 come immediately to mind -- but the Palmetto Sharpshooters do not fall within that specialized group.

And the unit clearly was not composed of "professionals." Except for a handful of officers who had trained at the South carolina Military Academy or perhaps one of the preparatory schools such as Kings Mountain Military Academy (not founded until 1856), the men of the PSS were like the men of other South Carolian units, a mix of volunteer farm boys and store clerks, for the most part, augmented by conscripts as the war progressed.