He's at least partially correct. A weapon is only as accurate as the man aiming it. While well trained troops, like the British and Prussian armies, could train to fire with good accuracy at long range during combat, the armies of the American Civil War were by and large not well trained. Certainly, accurate, long range shooting was not their strong suit; whereas British troops in the Crimea might hit once out of every twenty rounds fired, when you compare the number of cartridges issued to replace fired rounds with enemy casualties, Union troops at Gettysburg fired about two hundred rounds per enemy casualty. Soldiers only carried about sixty cartridges, so trying to hit at long range with even worse hit rates was not a winning proposition.

Paddy Griffith and Earl J. Hess have been beating this drum for a while now. There are very few mentions of long range engagements between infantry; the available testaments put the average combat range at about a hundred yards. With a rifle sighted to 300 yards, the bullet would arc over the heads of enemy infantry between 100 and 225 yards; most commanders felt trying to shoot into the further killzone was wasteful of ammunition, and they felt that close range, concentrated fire had a stronger effect on enemy morale. Then colonel Gordon, who became a corps commander by the end of the war, reserved fire when defending the sunken road at Antietam until his men could see the eagles on the yankee buttons, then let loose a storm of flame and lead into their faces at point blank range. John Bell Hood (if nothing else, one of the best fighters among the brass) discouraged his men from shooting at long range, saying that the ineffectiveness of long range fire would actually strengthen recipients' morale.