Pathfinder+Military Campaign - Civil War

[BegrudginglyGood]

Good evening, gents and fine ladies.

Having recently offered to DM a civil war era military campaign, I am beginning to look over the necessary materials. I've decided to use Pathfinder (with race restrictions, unfortunately) in an Advanced Firearms world. Luckily there are a wide range of yummy good things I can use, like cannons and muskets and swords.

There would probably only be around 7 or 8 people taking part.

I'm Australian, and we have never been at war on home turf, we are just lucky I guess...or lazy (I didn't say that!). And unlike a lot of you, American History was never a whole subject, it was actually just a couple of lessons in World History (with most of my history being more British and Aussie).

What this means? Well, I need some good ideas for scenario's/battles/missions that would be involved in such a war.

My current thoughts were to start with a large scale battle...with people basically making 10 simple characters (no stats, just a paragraph description) with different names that all belong to one group of friends per RPer (hometown boys or part of an old unit), and the battle would reduce down that list at random until only a couple would remain for each person...it would be these characters that then go on as specific people chosen for a new mission.

I wanted this to signify the high loss of life during those sorts of battles, and to give each person a chance to add the death of their friends to the survivors histories...were they siblings, friends or rivals perhaps. It would also mean they don't know exactly who they would be writing as from the get go.

After that battle I was thinking of a scouting mission to reclaim documents, perhaps an interception of enemy couriers or an attack on a smaller guarded wagon.

That, if they still were interested would lead onto the proper mission. This is the part I'm currently wondering about really. What would be an interesting civil war main mission.

Thoughts?  

[Liquidor]

If you need a run down on the Civil War, I can give you that. Highly suggest watching Ken Burn's The Civil War, old school PBS (think BBC) documentary. In short, the American Civil War was a mess, fought in a thousand different places, with a thousand different armies. The two "main" armies stared at each over a river for years.

Regiments of that era where formed from towns so you'd have like the mayor in command, the town doctor, the head priest, etc. You'd be walking in line with your father to your right and your brother to your left, behind you would be your next door neighbor and the male line of his family, etc. It was very unlikely that you fought in a regiment outside your immediate region. Also one thing to note about the US Army prior to the 1950's is that it was pretty much like a couple thousand troops during peace time. It took at least a year before a properly trained army could be fielded.