"Myths of the Civil War: The Fact, Fiction, and Science" Topic

…behind the Civil War's Most-Told Storie

"In the spirit of Robert Adair's cult classic The Physics of Baseball, here is a book that tackles the long-cherished myths of Civil War history—and ultimately shatters them, based on physics and mathematics. At what range was a Civil War sniper lethal? Did bullets ever "rain like hail"? Could one ever step across a battlefield by stepping only on bodies and never hard ground? How effective were Civil War muskets and rifles? How accurate are photographs and paintings?

In this genre-bending work of history, Scott Hippensteel puts the tropes of Civil War history under the microscope and says, "Wait a minute!" Combining science and history, Hippensteel reexamines much that we hold dear about the Civil War and convincingly argues that memoirs and histories have gotten it wrong…"
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Armand

"Bullets raining like hail" is a figure of speech. Haven't read the book, but would anyone waste words discussing this? Why would anyone waste time trying to figure out if you could walk across a battlefield on corpses, most people would try to step over them. It would be like discussing whether there are any animals involved when it is "raining cats and dogs"?