After giving us an overview of what the soldiers wore during the war we were given a demo on how skilled they needed to be to fire a rifle. They had to train over and over and over to load and fire their rifle as quick as possible. But even if they were the fastest they still were vulnerable while loading the rifle while the other side was shooting at them. I can’t imagine fighting in a war, let alone one in which you were basically standing in front of another person trying to load your rifle faster than they could load theirs. 

I hope someday there are generations that never see a war. Even that’s hard to imagine. 

“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 disease.  Roughly 2% of the populationan 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 6 million souls.”

Reference: CivilWar.org