The triumph at Manassas seemed, quite literally, to be a dream come true. Except that it really wasn’t at all. Those dreams of glory had not allowed for the bloodiest day in American history, in which green troops, Federals included, fought and stood fire with an unexpected fury; they had not counted on the sheer destructive power of the weapons and the hideous, disfiguring things they did to young men, the cruel agonies of death they inflicted.
