Imagine that you have served as a common soldier in the Confederate Army from 1861 to 1865.

...April 11, 1861, the Confederate General Beauregard asked Maj. Anderson, commander of the Union troops at Fort Sumter, to evacuate. Beauregard told the Union major we would start our attack on the Union fort in only one hour, when he received an unsuitable reply. 4:30 the next morning, 43 of us gathered around Fort Sumter and started to fire. After two hours the Union soldiers began an attempt to fire back at us. Throughout the entire three days that the battle raged, the Union soldiers went long periods of not defending their fort. We pelted them with canyon balls; numerous times the…