Talk:Battle of Spotsylvania Court House

message: There's cogent criticism of the neutrality and accuracy of this article by Matthew White at . Gdr 20:03, 2005 Apr 5 (UTC)
: Matthew is hereby invited to modify the article in any way he thinks he could improve it. One comment I'll make on his analysis of Grant vs Lee is that the latter had to exert more person control of the battle than he should have, due to failures or inexperience of his subordinates, the result of attrition. So I would expect Lee's name to come up more frequently. Try counting the total number of mentions of Union generals vs Confederate and see how they stack up. Hal Jespersen 21:49, 5 Apr 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Criticism by Matthew White

message: here it is, so read it again...
http://users.erols.com/mwhite28/wikiwoo.html#Spotsylvania
: Of course I read it, before I replied the first time. What point in his article interests you enough to post your question? Hal Jespersen 18:22, 18 May 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Did you actually read Matthew White's article?

message: Technically, this seems like a strategic victory for Grant (since he was able to continue the offensive), while a tactical victory for Lee, (who had less casualties), is it not? -- 169.244.143.115 14:46, 31 October 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Technically, the tactical victors of Civil War battles are determined by who leaves the battlefield first. So McClellan won at Antietam, Meade at Gettysburg, Lee at his other 62-63 battles. By this measure, SCH was a Confederate tactical victory, regardless of casualty figures. Strategic is another matter and is more debatable (which is why I spend little time worrying about the accuracy of these superficial battle boxes in the articles). Grant continued unabated with one of his strategic goals, wearing down Lee's army. He also got closer to Richmond. While I would call the full Overland Campaign an overall strategic victory (in hindsight), it is more difficult to explain why this bloody battle itself is strategic. I think "inconclusive" is OK. Hal Jespersen 15:13, 31 October 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Tactical victory for Lee, yes, but not so much so as the Wilderness because the proportion of casualties was less one-sided. Lee really won all three of the major spring 1864 battles tactically, but he gained nothing from Wilderness or Spotsylvania because he was unable to force Grant to retreat. Inconclusive is fine as the outcome. Jsc1973 (talk) 04:52, 16 January 2008 (UTC)

text: Actually I think it was a tactical and strategic victory for Grant if anything. The Union forces captured an entire Confederate division and twice secured breakthroughs in the Confederate lines the process of repairing them in turn costing the Confederate armies another set of sanguinary losses they could not afford. Lee is accounted tactical and strategic victories for the Seven Days' Battles so by any standard that say, Malvern Hill is a CS victory Spotsylvania's certainly a Union one. 
Battrarules (talk) 8:44 20 April 2011 (UCT).   —Preceding undated comment added 13:45, 20 April 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  inconclusive? 

message: Overall, the article is cogent and well-written, but I would suggest breaking up that first section, providing a brief introduction, context, and then a discussion of the actual battle. Carom 16:45, 25 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Assessment

message: Just a thought: Perhaps the mention of Ewell in the photo's cutline should link to the WP article on him.  Chouhouzi (talk) 21:04, 21 April 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: Done. You are welcome to improve articles by doing this sort of edit yourself in the future. Hal Jespersen (talk) 21:58, 21 April 2009 (UTC)
thread_title: Link to Ewell article?

message: The Battle for the Bloody Angle, a period of about 23 hours during the Spotsylvania fighting about which books have been written, ought to have its own section broken out, or maybe even its own page, referenced from this one.  
It is an event that people may search for, and currently redirects to a subsection of the page on Confederate officer Benjamin T. Brockman (who was mortally wounded there).  I may have time to start on this over the next few days.
Praghmatic (talk) 17:14, 8 October 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: If you want to expand the coverage, I would recommend doing it in a named section of this article, rather than a separate article. I have not encountered a book solely about this portion of the battle, but if one exists, it certainly must spend a significant amount of space on the background of the campaign and the rest of the battle beyond those 23 hours, and there is no reason to duplicate that in another article. You are right that the redirect is currently inappropriate. Hal Jespersen (talk) 02:01, 9 October 2010 (UTC)
replies: text:  You're certainly right about context being essential.  I took your suggestion and made a start.  Feel free to change the section titles; I just put in what occurred to me. I do have the book I mentioned somewhere, but can't put my hands on it at the moment.  Thus, much of my sense of the course of the battle comes from Rhea's "The Battles for Spotsylvania...", which I have at hand.  Praghmatic (talk) 20:47, 17 October 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: I've changed the redirect to the subsection on this page.⋙–Berean–Hunter—► ((⊕)) 21:16, 17 October 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Bloody Angle 

message: I've reassessed this article as broadly meeting the B-Class criteria; congratulations and thank you for your hard work. For future development: if the intention is to take the article to A-Class assessment I'd recommend splitting out the general references at the end of many paragraphs into more specific ones (some of the refs lump a number of sources together; these should probably be split up so each source is cited to the sentence(s) it supports). Additionally the images in the "May 7: The race to Spotsylvania" section would benefit from some rearrangement to prevent crowding the text, and the description "one of the top five battles of the Civil War" (Casualties section) is ambiguous and perhaps inappropriate given the subject of that section. Best, EyeSerenetalk 09:36, 9 March 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: The context in the Casualties sections is "... the costliest battle of the Overland Campaign and one of the top five battles of the Civil War," which could be reworded as "... the costliest battle of the Overland Campaign and one of the top five costliest of the Civil War" but that seems redundant. Make the change if you think it's useful. Hal Jespersen (talk) 18:32, 9 March 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: I see your point, it's just that wording like "top five" smacks of Top Trumps to me - it seems out of place when referring to battles :) I've made a small tweak, but please change back if you don't like. Thanks again for your work though, I found the article a fascinating read. EyeSerenetalk 08:37, 10 March 2011 (UTC)

text: Well, thank you, but your change is problematic. I don't think that "ruinous" is an appropriate adjective for a military article, but more significantly, I chose "top five" over "fourth" because, as indicated in List of American Civil War battles, it is arguable whether the Seven Days Battles was a seven-day battle or a campaign of six distinct battles, so the numbering is inexact depending on which view you take. There is no absolute consensus on the ordering of Civil War battles, other than Gettysburg was number one and that Antietam was the highest single day battle. Hal Jespersen (talk) 17:44, 10 March 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: Fair enough. Maybe "one of the five costliest battles of the Civil War" or something then, though I'll happily concede that if no-one else has objected to that particular wording then it's obviously just my perception and not a general one. I'll leave it to you :) Best, EyeSerenetalk 12:22, 14 March 2011 (UTC)

text: I'm not trying to suppress discussion. That particular language has only been there for a few weeks since I upgraded the article. If others have opinions, I invite them to jump in and edit responsibly. Hal Jespersen (talk) 19:52, 14 March 2011 (UTC)
thread_title: Milhist B-Class assessment

message: * The Union's Bloody Miscue at Spotsylvania's Muleshoe – Ling.Nut3 (talk) 05:17, 20 May 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Article: The Union's Bloody Miscue at Spotsylvania's Muleshoe 

message: I toured the battlefield today (27 October 2013), and I think the location of Upton's attack on May 10 is incorrect on the map. According to the markers at the site, Upton attacked from a point a fair distance southwest of where the map shows, closer to the where the illustration shows the trees, from Warren's lines in a path roughly in line with the McCoull house. The location shown is much closer to the "Bloody Angle," where the May 12 attacks took place.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by Jaypea99 (talk • contribs) 01:44, 28 October 2013 (UTC)
replies: text: I based the Wikipedia Spotsylvania maps (a long time ago!) mostly on the West Point Atlas maps. See their interpretation at http://www.westpoint.edu/history/SiteAssets/SitePages/American%20Civil%20War/ACW46c.gif Hal Jespersen (talk) 17:30, 28 October 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  Map of Upton's Attack on May 10 

message: Hello! This is a note to let the editors of this article know that :File:Battle of Spottsylvania by Thure de Thulstrup.jpg will be appearing as picture of the day on May 8, 2014. You can view and edit the POTD blurb at Template:POTD/2014-05-08. If this article needs any attention or maintenance, it would be preferable if that could be done before its appearance on the Main Page. Thanks! — Crisco 1492 (talk) 01:29, 21 April 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  [[:File:Battle of Spottsylvania by Thure de Thulstrup.jpg]]

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thread_title:  External links modified 

message: The citation for this actually reads indecisive, I think it was pretty clearly a tactical victory for the Confederates, who held the field and beat off many attacks and inflicted much higher casualties on the enemy, though these casualties were less replaceable. Grant wanted to break through Confederate lines and destroy Lee's army, he did neither and left. It's also probably overall a strategic victory for the CSA as keeping Lee's army intact and the war going was their primary objective, as well as trying to inflict as many casualties as possible before the Presidential elections. 124.254.119.18 (talk) 06:47, 4 January 2023 (UTC)
replies: text: Template:Infobox military conflict says to use either "X victory" or "Inconclusive". I personally do not see much difference between inconclusive and indecisive. American Battlefield Trust says inconclusive while National Park Service says indecisive. –CWenger (^ • @) 16:01, 4 January 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  "Inconclusive"