From Altoona, Pennsylvania and a focus on trains we spent most of a week in Hagerstown, Maryland focused mostly on several points along the C&O Canal with a side trip to Fort Frederick State Park. Then we got off the big road for a loop through Boonsboro, Maryland on the way down to overnight in Martinsberg, West Virginia on the way to Virginia.
Stopping by the Antietam National Battlefield they were having an re-enactment of the typical fighting style I increasingly refer to as a monument to stupidity. With the development of rifled muskets and the expanding base mini-ball good sharpshooters could be accurate to several hundred yards. Unfortunately reloading a musket required standing tall as a good target and poorly trained solders were only effective shooting in massed blocks typically at under fifty yards. Basically load by the numbers, close your eyes and pull the trigger in the old version of spray and pray used with an automatic rifle today.