Hallo!
Much, up until the later years of the War when thing started looking more like "World War I" with trenches, breastworks, and fortified positions rather than open field "Napoleonic" tactics, was still based on the concept of "leveling" or holding one's musket, rifle-musket, or rifle parallel to the ground. And straight ahead. (Although as early as the F & I War some forward-thinkers were doing firing by the "left or right oblique.")
So, the weapons were "maximized" by having them parallel to the ground in order to have a linear formation of roughly shoulder to shoulder infantrymen deliver a "horizontal sheet of lead" into an opposing line of "conveniently" equally arrayed enemy infantry. Obviously, being the one to "volley" fire or fire by file or company first gave an advantage. As did having the discipline to stand there and reload a couple or few more times before fixing bayonet and driving the (in theory) shot up and demoralized enemy off the field.
It is more tedious to research but CW letters and accounts sometimes speak to the battlefield ranges that they opened fire. In the tradition sometimes of Breed's/Bunker's Hill "don't fire until you see the whites of their eyes."
For example, at Gettysburg on July 2, 1863, the 42nd New York and 19th Massachusetts on the Federal left waited until Wilcox's Alabama Brigade was 50 yards from them before they opened up.
Curt
Curt Schmidt
Formerly 17 years a Sherman's Bodyguard
Married to a descendant of Senator John Sherman's wife
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