Talk:Battle of Cold Harbor

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Strength?

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)

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)

Facts altered

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)

Such as what? I did a 'diff' back to March and other than the big casualty discussion at the end, few substantive changes have been made in the past 7 months. Hal Jespersen 15:13, 8 December 2005 (UTC)

I did the original article; I don't see any factual changes, or any changes at all that I'd disagree with. user:Jsc1973

Question

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)

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)

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)

Details of the Battle

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)

Ever notice?

At what point in the War did Union soliders 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 Confederates.

(2) Union victories stand alone in triumph. Confederate victories are not absolute, and must be weighed against other factors such as the eventual outcome of the war. Confederate victories are always tainted.

(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.

(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 ambiguious 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.

(5) The Union soliders had finiky 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.

(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, the Confederates were superior. The Union had only two things in its favor... population and industry. If the South could have enjoyed anything approaching parity in these two factors, the history we read would be very, very different.

98.193.216.6 (talk) 01:09, 11 September 2009 (UTC)