Talk:Battle of Cold Harbor

message: Did Lee have 59,000 troops as per the article, or did he have 62,000 troops a per the info box in the article? Dalf | Talk 20:12, 12 Jun 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Just as with the casualty table I added at the end, estimates vary. The guys who did the battleboxes in these articles use the National Park Service numbers and I think consistency is a good thing for those boxes. For this battle, Esposito and Eicher say Lee had 59,000. Smith says 60,000. I could look up others, but you get the idea. Hal Jespersen 21:05, 12 Jun 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Strength? 

message: :Certain facts in this article seem to have been altered. Can someone please confirm that the altered versions are correct. If not, please revert the changes.
:::—gorgan_almighty 14:47, 8 December 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Facts altered 

message: I just watched Ken Burns' "The Civil War", and it repeatedly stated that 7,000 soldiers died in 20 minutes at some point during the battle. Anyone have a source on this?Lord of the Ping 06:26, 9 September 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: There is a rather lengthy discussion of casualty figures in the article. The 7000 figure is often mentioned for the first 20 minutes of the June 3 assault, although recent scholarship has indicated that it was closer to 4000. It is either sloppy writing or sloppy listening to consider a casualty figure to be the number killed. Casualties include wounded and prisoners as well and often only about 10% of the casualty figures from a Civil War battle are actually killed in action. Hal Jespersen 16:27, 9 September 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I'm aware that casualties and the number of killed are not necessarily the same. The film said there were 7000 killed in 20 minutes, not that there were 7000 casualties. I just brought it up because "The Civil War" is a popular documentary and that was a salient statistic. I couldn't find a reputable online source for that either.--Lord of the Ping 06:59, 10 September 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Question 

message: I am not a Civil War buff, far from it, and I know that the real buffs take their history very seriously. As I read the details of the battle (the section named "Battle"), I noticed that the various divisions of each army are consistently identified by their commanding officer, but not necessarily by their affiliation (Union or Confederacy). Obviously, I could have clicked on the links for each commander and found their affiliation quickly enough, but this article, by itself, does not always make the affiliation of a particular unit clear. Is it standard in detailed Civil War or military history discussions to only identify a military unit by its commander, and not by affiliation? If so, I'll quite happily leave it as it is and not interfere. If not, however, clearly indicating which side each unit is fighting for would improve the text description of the battle dramatically. Oneforlogic (talk) 22:06, 12 June 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Details of the Battle 

message: At what point in the War did Union soldiers stop being green and inexperienced and become "veterans" as the Confederates are always described as being?  Certainly not by the 4th year of the War.  In reading the battle histories I have noticed these truisms... 
(1) Union victories are due to the brilliance of Union commanders, while Confederate victories are due to misunderstandings, miscommunications, bad ground, bad weather, or simply sheer good fortune favoring the "veteran" Confederates.
(2) Union victories stand alone in triumph.  Confederate victories are not absolute, and must be weighed against other factors such as earlier or later battles, or the eventual outcome of the war.  Confederate victories are therefore always tainted with a "it did no good for them to win" approach to the victory.  
(3) Union soldiers are only veterans in the case of heroic or successful military actions, but are always poorly led raw recruits in Union defeats.  Win or lose, the Confederates are always battle hardened veterans.  This hardness contributes both to Union defeats by creating an excuse, and to Union victories by glamorizing the extra courage and effort necessary to defeat the Confederates.   
(3) Despite their overwhelming size, the Union armies never use "all their forces" in any battle, especially the ones the lucky Confederates won.  The Confederate Army of course never suffered from this problem, and its troops were always in the thick of things.
(4) Union forces sizes are always ambiguous and usually understated despite the excellence of U.S. Army record keeping, while Confederate numbers are generally inflated despite the absence of reliable archival data and statements of Confederates to the contrary.  The Union Army always seems to know more about the size of the opposing forces than it did its own.  Union numbers usually include only those activily committed to battle, while Confederate "estimates" are theaterwide. Dead Confederates are simply dead, while as in this article dead Federals are dead only in relation to the relative sizes of the two armies (therefore a higher Union loss is really a lesser loss).
(5) The Union soldiers had finicky morale, which could be affected by a number of factors.  The Confederates, despite their rarely mentioned many privations that were unknown to the Federals (such as living hungry and barefoot), always had superb morale which again runs counter to Confederate accounts.  Where the word "morale" is used, either good or bad, it is nearly always in reference to Union soldiers.  The only differences between the Union and Confederate armies were their sizes in numbers, and the right to have bad morale which was afforded only to the Federals.  The types, numbers and condition of weapons and other necessities of war such as shoes are not considered.
(6) Accounts of battles, which resulted in Union defeats, are always prefaced by the reasons for the upcoming defeat (see #1, #2 and #3).  It is possible to determine the victor of any battle simply by reading the first two paragraphs of the text.  And, I think I know why.  The reason is to obscure the simple fact that in all the essentials of war except population size and industrial capacity, the Confederates were superior.  If the South could have enjoyed anything approaching parity with the North on these two factors, the history we read would be very, very different.
The article is typical.
98.193.216.6 (talk) 01:26, 11 September 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: Rather than waxing philosophically about generalities, why don't you recommend specific problems to correct in specific articles--or, in the spirit of Wikipedia, edit them yourself? Cold Harbor definitely had some green troops (at least in terms of their combat infantry experience) on the Union side because Grant transferred some soldiers from DC heavy artillery units to the front. Proportional losses in the armies was one of the key factors in judging the effectiveness of Grant's campaign. The morale of the Union soldiers in this battle is widely noted by all historians--they felt they were being sent on a hopeless attack, and rightfully so. (Although I tend to doubt that a cheerful army would have prevailed here in any event, it's too widely remarked upon to ignore here.) And if you think that trying to disguise the winner of the battle in the first couple of paragraphs is a good idea, perhaps you would be more interested in mystery novels than history articles. Hal Jespersen (talk) 14:46, 11 September 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Ever notice? 

message: I have read both articles (an example of splendid Wikipedian writing that this site can be recognized for), however, one thing that makes me a little mad is the the criticism that occurred in the aftermath of both battles. At Fredericksburg, it seems that Burnside is heavily criticized and flamed upon by the press to great lengths, while the only thing I can find in this article that criticizes Grant is "Grant became known as the "fumbling butcher" for his poor decisions". Whereas, I see all this towards Burnside and the President:  
The Cincinnati Commercial wrote, "It can hardly be in human nature for men to show more valor or generals to manifest less judgment, than were perceptible on our side that day." Senator Zachariah Chandler, a Radical Republican, wrote that, "The President is a weak man, too weak for the occasion, and those fool or traitor generals are wasting time and yet more precious blood in indecisive battles and delays." Pennsylvania Governor Andrew Curtin visited the White House after a trip to the battlefield. He told the president, "It was not a battle, it was a butchery." Curtin reported that the president was "heart-broken at the recital, and soon reached a state of nervous excitement bordering on insanity." Lincoln himself wrote, "If there is a worse place than hell, I am in it."
Was this battle seriously only a "small blow to Union morale" or are there some unmentioned facts in this article?--McBuHoMeGr (talk) 02:41, 25 January 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: Well, it also states "The battle caused a rise in anti-war sentiment in the Northern states." The tendency to focus on the Fredericksburg aftermath is probably due to the fact that it represented the end of a failed campaign for a new commander and the rest of the winter would be spent mulling over the defeat. In the case of Cold Harbor, it was the third in a series of really bloody battles coming one after another and Grant kept moving forward, giving reporters other things to write about. That is only my opinion. This is one of my earlier articles and as you can see it is deficient in citations. I will eventually upgrade it and take your concerns into account, but in the meantime you are welcome to make improvements to the article yourself. Hal Jespersen (talk) 16:41, 25 January 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Cold Harbor vs Fredericksburg Aftermath 

message: First of all, there is nothing wrong with the way the detail of this article is portrayed; in fact, the opening read is straightforwardly brilliant. Conclusively, there is no necessary exigency to alter this article from where it stands in ANY form.shyjayb 13:38, 9 July 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  Great Article and good to the point 

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thread_title:  External links modified