Most modern readers are familiar with what the Civil War was like at the outset. In July 1861, thousands of patriotic Union and Confederate volunteers, wearing brightly colored parade ground uniforms, met on fields near Manassas, Virginia. There, in what is today suburban Washington DC, the soldiers of each army confidently expected to trounce the other. The war, many believed, would be won for their side in that one battle. Throughout the struggle bands would play sprightly marches.
All wounds be superficial.
Every man would conduct himself as a hero should and there would be plenty of glory to go around. Instead, what the eager Northern and Southern patriots discovered was that this war would be ugly, painful, corrupt, and for some, embarassing. Confederates would call July 1861, Battle of Manassas and remember it as bloody and confusing, won only in its last hours when Southern railroads delivered reinforcements in a timely fashion. Union soldiers would call it the Battle of Bull Run and remember it as something worse than defeat. On this battlefield, the bands did play for a while.