ABSTRACT
To say that this was the world's first large-scale, "modern" war is to say that people had learned to kill each other in greater numbers over wider distances. Revolutionary-era muskets had poor accuracy beyond 1 00 yards and could be fired only two or three times a minute at best. Most Civil War soldiers used rifles, whose rifled barrels had spiral grooves etched into them, giving better accuracy and range. Repeat-action Spencer rifles could fire seven shots in a row, while Enfield rifled muskets were accurate well past 400 yards. Most soldiers, therefore, had to face the prospect of being pierced with a bullet fired from an unseen gun, and soldiers' diary entries and letters home are suffused with residual battlefield terror. Then again, not all soldiers felt terrified in combat. After the first major battle of the war at Bull Run on July 21, 1861, Confederate soldier Clinton Hatcher wrote, "Besides wanting to stick my bayonette in a Yankee I wish to see if I can feel as cool when marching on the steel as I did while the balls were whistling round me."2
