Why couldn’t average Civil War soldier hit
anything? Practice was sadly lacking

The average Civil War soldier couldn’t hit the proverbial bull in the behind with a bass fiddle.

Training would have helped, but training in marksmanship was something woefully lacking in most commands during the Civil War. Little time or ammunition was allocated to actual range practice – and many recruits went into battle without having fired a single practice round.

It was little wonder that pounds of lead were expended for each hit made, that many a man fired his piece, un-aimed, into the blue, or that front-rank men, their ears ringing or their beards singed, were known to turn about and pummel their overzealous rear-rank comrades.

Poor marksmanship wasn’t necessarily true, however, where the Confederacy was concerned, as southern boys were used to hunting squirrels and rabbits and other game.  If they didn’t hit their targets, it more than likely was the fault of the weapon or ammunition.

What made hitting a target extremely difficult was the high trajectory of the huge chunks of lead thrown by the old rifled muskets. Ranges had to be correctly estimated and sights carefully adjusted for anything but the very closest ranges. A bullet fired by a kneeling man at the belt buckle of a man running toward him at an estimated range of 300 yards would just pass over the head of a man 250 yards away. Therefore, if the shooter had overestimated the range by as little as 50 yards, he would have missed.

The accuracy problem notwithstanding, the Civil War remains as America’s bloodiest conflict. The unprecedented violence of battles such as Shiloh, Antietam, Stones River, and Gettysburg shocked citizens and international observers alike.

Disease took many lives. Nearly as many men died in captivity during the Civil War as were killed in the whole of the Vietnam War. Hundreds of thousands died of some type of illness, such as dysentery, tuberculosis (consumption), diphtheria, smallpox or typhus.

Roughly two percent of the population – an estimated 620,000 men – lost their lives in the line of duty. Taken as a percentage of today’s population, the toll would have risen as high as six million individuals.