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The vast preponderance of Civil War combat was not between massed battle lines, but rather dispersed open-order 4-man skirmish teams called “comrades in battle” (tragically similar to “battle buddies”) who bounded from cover to cover, covering each other with fire and maneuver. 
Multiple companies, or occasionally even an entire regiment dispersed into such 4-man teams and led by senior NCOs or junior officers, advanced as a “cloud” in loose coordination hundreds of yards or more ahead of the massed main body of a command.
It was their job to engage in a stiff rolling firefight with enemy skirmishers, drive them back to their own main body, and suppress or even directly engage that force with their aimed fire from behind cover.
The massed battle line to their rear, while always capable of repelling an advance of the enemy skirmishers or main line with massed volleys, far more often functioned as little more than a reserve for the skirmish teams. More companies were deployed into 4-man teams as needed.
Massed lines were meant primarily for bayonet assaults, using raw human weight to punch holes through defensive positions, but in most cases even during these comparatively rare occasions, attacking lines were routinely screened by skirmish teams.
Unfortunately, skirmishing operations were rarely accounted for in great detail in surviving reports. These usually focused on the comparatively rare maneuvers of massed troops in major assaults or defensive actions that were much rarer than skirmishing firefights.
Even so, all Civil War officers and soldiers on both sides knew well the contemporary military maxim that: “Infantry burns the most of its powder as skirmishers.”
Although we often think of Civil War tactics as antiquated or even crude by modern standards, most actual exchanges of fire in and out of major battles took place under circumstances that would seem remarkably recognizable by today’s modern grunt.
