Michael, if you ever get the chance you should visit the Manassas battlefield. When you get to the position held by Stafford's men you'll find a rather large illustration (from Battles and Leaders of the Civil War) showing Stafford's men throwing rocks at the Yankees. When researching Lee's Tigers I found a letter from one of the men in the 9th Louisiana who wrote "We cut them down as they threw themselves in sight." I didn't quite know what he meant at first because I assumed they could see the enemy approaching from a long distance. But the La. position was on sort of crest and the slope broke out in front of them (less than 100 yards as I remember). Thus the Yankees would have been invisible coming up the slope until they suddenly popped into few at close range. That experience taught me the importance of actually walking the battlefields. You can learn a lot.