The Civil War has long been perceived as a total war, or modern war - as a conflict which presaged a future filled with horrible new weapons, relentless strategies, and terrible loss of life. The characteristics of total warfare certainly manifested themselves on and off the battlefield. Those changes were much less pronounced off the battlefield, where the reality of warfare remained largely the same for Civil War soldiers as it had for the veterans of America s previous conflicts. On the battlefield, however, modern war making demanded new tactics that significantly changed the combat experience of Northern and Southern soldiers. Some men found it difficult to adjust and lost their faith in what they were fighting for, but most veterans of the Civil War retained their belief that war was a justifiable, albeit horrible, solution to political problems. Caught in the middle of a quickly changing military environment, Civil War soldiers were tested by the reality of combat more terribly than any previous American warriors.

Civil War soldiers benefited only slightly from new technology, communications, and transportation, for their society had not yet reached an accelerated phase in its modern development. America was only a partially industrialized nation in the 1860s. It stood poised on the threshold of world industrial leadership, but that would not occur until at least three decades after the war.