“Hold your fire!” Bird had his own opinions about infantry fire. He was convinced that the first volley was the most destructive and should be saved until the enemy was close at hand. He accepted that he had no experience to bolster that opinion, which clashed with the professional doctrine that was taught at West Point and that had been tested in the war against Mexico, but Major Bird refused to believe that soldiering demanded that he entirely suspend the exercise of his intelligence, and so he looked forward to this morning’s test of his theory. Indeed, as he watched the blue-coated ranks advance toward him through the patches of gunsmoke that hung above the meadow, he found himself hoping that Colonel Faulconer did not suddenly reappear to take back the Legion’s command. Major Thaddeus Bird, against all his expectations, was beginning to enjoy himself.

“Time to open fire, Uncle?” Adam suggested.

“I’d like to wait, in fact I will wait.”

The Yankees’ attacking line was losing its order as the attackers paused to fire and reload, then hurried on again. The minié bullets from the southern skirmishers were causing casualties, and the small roundshots of the two southern guns were slapping horribly through the attackers’ files to slash quick bloody swathes on the grass and leave wounded men screaming and writhing in agony. The Yankee skirmishers were snipping at their Confederate opposites, but the battle of skirmishers was a sideshow, a mere sop to military theory that insisted that light infantry range ahead of an attack to weaken the defenders with a galling fire. The main northern attack was coming on too fast and in too much force to need the help of a skirmish line.

Much of the northern artillery had become unsighted by their own men and had fallen silent, though their howitzers, which fired their missiles high into the air, still lobbed shells over the attackers’ files. Evans’s two guns carried on firing, but Starbuck noted a change in the sound the guns were making and realized they must have changed their ammunition to canister. Canister was a cylindrical tin crammed with musket bullets that burst open at the cannon’s muzzle to hurl a spreading cone of bullets at the enemy, and Starbuck could see the effect of the tin cans by the groups of wounded and dead men snatched backward onto the turf from the attackers’ lines. Drummers were still beating the attack onward and the northerners were cheering as they advanced, their voices enthusiastic, almost cheerful, as if this whole performance were a sporting contest. The closest American flag was lavishly fringed with gold tassels and so heavy that the standard-bearer seemed to wade forward as though he walked in water. The regiment of regular soldiers had caught up with the attack’s front line and now hurried forward with fixed bayonets for the honor of being the first federal soldiers to break into the rebel defense.