Reply #44: I think your premise is faulty . If you look at some of the

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bloodier battles of the Civil War (Antietam, Shiloh just to name two) you will find that thousands of men were killed in the space of just a couple of hours of battle. That doesn't fit with your theory of "our soldiers would fire high, low and back... (and) simply continue to load their rifles and never fire them at all during battle". In addition, you obliquely refer to what was a real problem with soldiers new to combat during the Civil War - in the heat of combat they loaded their muskets, forgot to fire, and reloaded them again, often repeating that sequence more than once. When they finally fired, the musket usually blew up, often killing the novice soldier.