I submit that today’s re-enactors tend to be a bit more pudgy than the average Civil War soldier.
They tend to look more like Grant’s Chief of Engineers at Vicksburg, who asked relief from the order to visit the front lines daily, unless they needed him as a ‘sap roller’.
agreed. Looking at the rebs in the Picketts charge scene from the movie Gettysburg; lot of them do not fit the lean mean fighting machine image of real Confederate soldiers. Of course there were some stout folks during the war. Generals Rufus Ingals and George H. Thomas come to mind.