ULTRA RARE WHITWORTH HOLLOW POINT SNIPER BULLET COLD HARBOR BATTLE FIELD AREA

Description

UP FOR BID IS ONE ULTRA RARE WHITWORTH
HOLLOW POINT
SNIPER BULLET RECOVERED FROM THE COLD HARBOR BATTLE FIELD AREA. THIS HIGHLY COVETED BULLET WAS FOUND IN A CACHE LOCATED WITHIN A STONE WALL,ALONG WITH SEVERAL OTHER ITEMS,ON PRIVATE PROPERTY ADJACENT TO THE BATTLEFIELD PARK PROPERTY.THIS LOCATION WAS MOST LIKELY A SNIPERS STASH AS IT CONTAINED SEVERAL OTHER PERSONAL ITEMS,THAT I WILL BE LISTING AS WELL, SHORTLY.
THE BULLET HAS A SLIGHT PATINA TO IT,UNLIKE THOSE THAT ARE DUG,AS THIS ONE WAS LOCATED NOT IN THE DIRT BUT NESTLED IN A CAVITY  OF A STONE WALL SEVERAL INCHES OFF OF THE GROUND. IT IS IN NEARLY PRISTINE CONDITION HAVING HAD NO GROUND ACTION UPON IT, ONLY 150 YEARS OF THE EFFECTS OF MOISTURE AND HUMIDITY.
FINDING A WHITWORTH BULLET IS VERY RARE INDEED,BUT TO FIND A VARIANT SUCH AS THIS AND IN THIS CONDITION, IS MONUMENTAL.
Some History of the Battle:
THE SOUTH'S LAST HURRAH
Battle of Cold Harbor,Virginia, May 31st_June 12th,1864
The final battle of the Overland Campaign took place at an undistinguished old crossroads.
A critically strategic crossroads because it controlled movement in five directions,just 10 miles northeast of Richmond.
The Battle of Cold Harbor was fought from May 31 to June 12, 1864, with the most significant fighting occurring on June 3. On this day,unbelievably, despite having been given orders and an extra day to prepare before engaging Lee’s army, the Union corps commanders had conducted practically no reconnaissance of Lee's formidable seven-mile front that stretched from Bethesda Church to the Chickahominy river. As a result, the union troops would be charging blind.
When they received their orders early on the morning of June 3, the soldiers did not panic or run; many of them simply wrote their names and addresses on slips of paper, and pinned the notes to the inside of their blouses, so that their bodies could be identified for burial.
Their fatalism proved amply justified. The attack began in mist and fog, at 4:30 a.m. As they charged, all the Yankees could see before them was freshly turned earth, behind which were the entrenched rifle pits of thousands of waiting rebels. During the first crucial hour of the main attack General Lee's,crack veteran infantry,although out numbered by 2 to 1 scored kills of 5 to 1.
The confederates poured volley after volley of withering enfilade fire into the hapless federals. They died in rows, in waves; as many as 7,000 Union soldiers fell in that terrible hour, most in the first 10 minutes. The field was soon littered with Union dead and wounded.
Grant had given the order to attack,a decision that resulted in an unmitigated disaster.  It was one of the final battles of Union Lt. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant's Overland Campaign during the American Civil War and is remembered as one of American history's bloodiest, most lopsided battles.
In a war that had seen more than its share of uncompromising slaughter, Cold Harbor would stand alone.
Grant said of the battle in his memoirs,
"I have always regretted that the last assault at Cold Harbor was ever made. ... No advantage whatever was gained to compensate for the heavy loss we sustained."
The armies confronted each other on these lines until the night of June 12. It was an impressive defensive victory for Lee, but it would be his last major victory in the war.
SOME STATS ON THE BATTLE OF COLD HARBOR VIRGINIA 1864:
Generals
Union: Lt. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant
Confederate: Gen. Robert E. Lee
Soldiers Engaged
Union: 108,000
Confederate: 53,000
Cold Harbor Casualties
Union: 12,700
Confederate: 1,500
SOME HISTORY ON THE WHITWORTH
THE MAN:
The Whitworth Rifle was developed in 1857 by English engineer and inventor, Sir Joseph Whitworth. It was developed to be a more accurate replacement for the standard British Army rifle of the time, the Pattern 1853 Enfield.
Sir Joseph Whitworth was a skilled engineer who seemed to be on a lifelong pursuit of accuracy. He came up with a method of using engineer’s blue and scraping to produce flat surface plates that could be measured to one-millionth of an inch. Not happy with that, he came up with the first standardized screw threads. Before this, each nut and screw maker just used their own. His bolt-thread standard system, known to history as British Standard Whitworth, is still in use for some applications like camera tripod and pipe threads today.
Whitworth looked at the Enfield rifle and kept what worked. He kept the lock, the trigger, the percussion cap ignition system, the overall size and general dimensions. The Enfield was accurate out to 500-yards and could produce 4-inch groups at 100 all day. Whitworth thought that could be improved upon.The Enfield used a fat skirted .577-caliber bullet with a semi-rounded end. A series of rings in the soft lead would expand when the charge behind it went off and forced the bullet to grip the ever-so slow 1:78 rifling in the barrel. Seeing the inefficiency of this design, Whitworth developed a twisted hexagonal barrel, firing a long and skinny hex-shaped six-sided bullet.
THE SETTING:
During the American Civil War both Union and Confederate armies created special military units which performed similar roles as modern-day snipers. The South’s version of these early sniper units were known as Whitworth Sharpshooters, named for the unique long-range rifle they used – the legendary  Whitworth Rifle,an incredibly accurate and effective piece of military hardware.
Quite a few Whitworth rifles were purchased by the Confederate Army of America and were used in the US Civil War with deadly accuracy. The Confederates were fighting against a Union force that was vastly larger and had better artillery. To counter the artillery of the Union army, the Confederates created the Whitworth Sharpshooters . In fact, this unit was the birth of the first dedicated modern sniper unit and the Whitworth is one of the original sniper rifles! According to many stories, soldiers using the Whitworths routinely made kill shots at ranges over 1000 yards .
The Whitworth Rifles were used primarily as part of a strategy designed to counter the Union’s larger artillery force. Conferderate sharpshooters positioned themselves on the battlefield to harass and eliminate opposing artillery crews. They were also effectively used to attack the command-and-control elements of the Union army by targeting Northern officers during engagements.
THE RIFLE:
It is without question that the most feared rifle of the American Civil War was the British– made Whitworth rifle imported by the Confederacy and delivered by fearless blockade runners thru the blockade of the U.S. Navy. It was necessary sometimes to deploy entire artillery batteries to silence one single Whitworth sharpshooter .The Whitworth is typical of most Civil War rifles in appearance and function. It has an external side-lock, is muzzle-loaded with black powder, is fired with a percussion cap and weighs roughly 9 lbs. The rifle differs radically from other period firearms because it features a revolutionary twisted hexagonal bore with no rifling. In testing for the Army, the gun proved far more accurate than the Enfield rifle. In a controlled environment with bench rests on a 14×14-foot target, the furthest reliable hits the Enfield could achieve were at 1,100 yards, registering a 96-inch group. The Whitworth obtained a 12-inch group at 1800-yards.
That’s a one-mile shot with a blackpowder rifle, no matter if you use the old or new math.
There were a number of variants of the Whitworths used by the South (even one with a four power telescopic sight) but most common had a barrel length of 33 inches and featured open sights with an adjustable front blade.
THE BULLET:
The Whitworth fired a special twisted hexagonal bullet made from a hard lead-tin alloy which deformed less on firing (and because the rifle had no grooves for a soft lead bullet, like a Minie ball, to expand into). The .451 caliber, elongated bullet (smaller in diameter and longer in length than most period rifle bullets) coupled with a tighter twist of the barrel, 1:20 (the Enfiled was 1:78 ) produced an exceptionally stable and long-range round. The ratio,1:20,would equate to, one full revolution of the bullet for every 20 inches of travel.
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