This has excellent bones, I promise you that I'm liking it alot. I do have a few issues though:
"Martin was scared that his secret would be revealed to his family and tried to leave the farm loft. However, he accidentally tripped on the LeMat pistol and shot himself, which resulted in James getting out his much needed bath to inspect him with a towel wrapped across his waistline.
Martin was told by James to lie down and James undid Martin's trousers to see the damage, which he hoped was not too severe. LeMat pistols are well renowned for their miniature grape shot feature like a shotgun, which could shoot scatter fragment bullets at targets resulting in grave injuries. Luckily, James had switched the shooting mode to single shot, which he knew raised the chances of the kid's survival if he was hit directly."
This section really stood out for me. The reason? Your really trying very hard to tell us what's happening. I understand you have all this infomation about the time in your head and you want to make this as real as possible but this is fiction, it's always better to show rather than tell where you can.
The pacing is also very...VERY fast, I actully had to read a few things a number of times to see if ther ewas was some missing paragraphs.
Appart from that I feel the need to argue about the causes of the civil war (I wont because...it's fiction, the charater said it and this isn't role play XD) and the fact that I really feel for that poor horse (1 person on a two year old colt, especially a heavy muscled man would do a decent amount of physical and probably mental damage to the beast let alone 2) and that I can't figure out why the "trained solider" would leave possibly his most prized possession, his gun, lying around ready to be triped on, I do like this story. I haven't read anythig even closely like it, I just feel the bone's need, should have even, a bit more meat on them, they deserve it. Personal opinions.
