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11. Henry Matrau, February 27, 1862, in Marcia Reid-Green, ed., Letters Home: Henry Matrau of the Iron Brigade (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1993), p. 20.
12. Bagby Scrapbook, vol. 2, p. 55, VHS. On comradeship as motivation to fight, see James M. McPherson, For Cause and Comrades: Why Men Fought in the Civil War (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997).
13. Some historians cite the range of the new rifle as up to a thousand yards, but Gary W. Gallagher of the University of Virginia believes three hundred yards of effective use is a more accurate way to understand its capacities. My thanks to him for his help on this question. James M. McPherson estimates that 20 percent of the Confederate army and 8 percent of the Union army were draftees and substitutes. McPherson, Ordeal by Fire: The Civil War and Reconstruction (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1982), pp. 182–83.
14. Grossman, On Killing, pp. 24–25. Debate has raged about soldiers’ firing rates since the work of S. L. A. Marshall on nonfirers in World War II. See Grossman’s response to these debates on p. 333. See also S. L. A. Marshall, Men Against Fire: The Problem of Battle Command in Future War (New York: Morrow, 1947), and John Keegan, The Face of Battle (New York: Viking Press, 1976).
15. Val C. Giles, Rags and Hope: The Recollections of Val C. Giles, Four Years with Hood’s Brigade, Fourth Texas Infantry, 1861–1865, ed. Mary Lasswell (New York: Coward-McCann, 1961), p. 208.
16. S. H. M. Byers, “How Men Feel in Battle: Recollections of a Private at Champion Hills,” Annals of Iowa 2 ( July 1896): 449; Henry Abbott, July 6, 1863, in Robert Garth Scott, ed., Fallen Leaves: The Civil War Letters of Major Henry Livermore Abbott (Kent, Ohio: Kent State University Press, 1991), p. 188; Hess, Union Soldier in Battle, pp. 55, 52. On wounds, see George Worthington Adams, Doctors in Blue: The Medical History of the Union Army in the Civil War (New York: Henry Schuman, 1952), p. 113.
17. Kenneth Macksey and William Woodhouse, eds., The Penguin Encyclopedia of Modern Warfare: 1850 to the Present Day (London: Penguin, 1991), p. 111. On the changing nature and size of battle, see also John Keegan, The Face of Battle (New York: Viking, 1976), pp. 285–336. On tactics, see James M. McPherson, Battle Cry of Freedom (New York: Oxford University Press, 1988), pp. 474–76, and Brent Nosworthy, The Bloody Crucible of Courage: Fighting Methods and Combat Experience of the Civil War (New York: Carroll & Graf, 2003).
18. William Drayton Rutherford to Sallie F. Rutherford, June 23, 1864, William Drayton Rutherford Papers, SCL. On requirements, see Gerald Smith, “Sharp-shooters,” in David and Jeanne Heidler, eds., Encyclopedia of the Civil War (Santa Barbara, Calif.: ABC Clio, 2000), vol. 4, p. 1743. “To the Sharp Shooters of Windham County,” August 19, 1861 (Bellows Falls, Vt.: Phoenix Job Office, 1861), reproduced in Letters from a Sharpshooter: The Civil War Letters of Private William B. Greene, 1861–1865, transcribed by William H. Hastings (Belleville, Wis.: Historic Publications, 1993), p. 4.
19. Isaac Hadden to Brother, Wife and All, June 5, 1864, and June 12, 1864, Misc. Mss. Hadden, Isaac, NYHS; Henry Abbott to J. G. Abbott, July 6, 1863, in Scott, ed., Fallen Leaves p. 184. On snakes, see Richard Pindell, “The Most Dangerous Set of Men,” Civil War Times Illustrated, July–August 1993, p. 46.
20. Petersburg paper quoted in William Greene to Dear Mother, June 26, 1864, in Letters from a Sharpshooter, p. 226; De Forest, Volunteer’s Adventures, p. 144. On sharpshooters see also Hess, Union Soldier in Battle, pp. 106–7, and Michael Walzer, Just and Unjust Wars (New York: Basic Books, 1977), p. 140. On sharpshooting and its very personal