Those "inspired" by the Battle of Gettysburg and acts of supreme idiocy like Pickett's suicidal expedition would do well to read Drew Gilpin Faust's This Republic of Suffering: Death and the American Civil War. New York, Knoph, 2008.

Ambrose Bierce's dozen or more 'Civil War Stories' - especially
What I Saw of Shiloh - are also instructive. I believe there's a new collection of these just published.