A book i recently read -On Killing- seemed to suggest that only 15–20% of soldiers actually fired their service rifles or muskets with intent to kill/hit during the Civil War.

Even cases where opposing forces would shout battle cries at each other through wooded terain and the loser would be the one to retreat first. Leaders were dumfounded that the most advanced troops in the known history of warfare were so inept at killing each other.

In Napoleonic warfare cannon and morrale won battles. Not superior musketry and most defiantly not the constantly disastrous heavy cavalry charges.

It is obvious to assume that in its first significant outing shelled artillery would have been the most serious cause of death and destruction during the Civil War and the reason for its surprisingly high death toll.

The bloody birth of modern America foretold the horror of what industrial scale warfare and bad/unrefined doctrine could bring little under 50 years later.