Regiments went into battle with no training, with defective rifles, and sometimes with no rifles at all. Their officers were equally ignorant of their duties."(2) Throughout the war many soldiers faced battle before ever having fired a shot. Many of them had arrived but a day or two before and were hardly able to load their muskets according to the manual. Grant recalled that "many of the men had only received their arms on the way from their States to the field. calling themselves soldiers."(1) Ulysses S. Bruce Catton termed the forces that fought the Battle of Shiloh "not really armies. Neither side instituted, or was capable of instituting, a program to teach newly commissioned officers the intricacies of military life. This stereotype contains much truth, particularly in the first year of the war when neither North nor South had enough trained, experienced men to lead their armies. One of the most frequently found stereotypes in Civil War literature is the amateur officer - a farmer, a small-town lawyer, a grocer taken suddenly from his peaceful civilian existence and placed in command of a company or regiment of men, a civilian in uniform as devoid of military knowledge and experience as the men he commands, staying up late at night studying Hardee's Tactics in order to learn enough to drill his men the next morning. APA style: West Points of the Confederacy: Southern military schools and the Confederate Army.West Points of the Confederacy: Southern military schools and the Confederate Army." Retrieved from
MLA style: "West Points of the Confederacy: Southern military schools and the Confederate Army." The Free Library.
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