It took over eight hours, not eight minutes, to inflict those horrendous casualties on Grant’s soldiers. And as in most wars from the time of Napoleon on down to today, it was not the infantry but the artillery that inflicted most of these casualties. Only when artillery (with its close supervision and mutual surveillance processes among the crew) is brought into play can any significant change in this killing rate be observed. (The greater distance that artillery usually is from its targets, as we will see, also increases its effectiveness.)
