The first modern Sniper Rifle at ranges of over 1,500 yards, the Witworth Rifle was the preferred weapon of the Confederate Sharpshooters in the Civil War.

Though the Union never used it, as breech - loaders like the Sharps were used by sharpshooters instead, that did not remove it's fearsome reputation, a it made the longest ranged kill of the war at nearly 3,000 yards, when Sharpshooters shot maj. general John Sedgwick, the most senior soldier to be killed in action in the Civil War.