Talk:Battle of Nashville

Decisive or Not??

I don't want to start an edit war over this. What's the argument for leaving decisive out? To me it seems to imporve the page, since it provides are more detailed description of the result. MarcusGraly 17:43, 13 July 2006 (UTC)

I have been on a campaign to keep all adjectives--decisive, major, minor, marginal, Pyrric--out of the ACW summary boxes. There is ample opportunity to describe the results more fully in the text of the article. In this particular case, what specifically does a reader think "decisive" means? That there was a clear winner? That it "decided" the campaign? The War? The fate of Hood's army? Since there is no degree of precision available here with an undefined term, best to leave it out. Hal Jespersen 18:41, 13 July 2006 (UTC)

Fair enoughMarcusGraly 20:02, 13 July 2006 (UTC)

I couldn't disagree more. I mean, how can the Battle of Shiloh and the Battle of Nashville both be considered merely Union victories? At the BOS, the Union won, but a large portion of the Confederate forces lived to fight another day. At the BON, the Union also won, but according to the article, the battle

...was one of the most stunning victories achieved by the Union Army in the war. The formidable Army of Tennessee, the second largest Confederate force, was essentially destroyed and would never fight again.

Who would call that a mere Union victory!!?? That is simply not accurate. See my comments in the talk page for the Battle of the Wilderness (Battle Results section) for how I think we should list battle results in the summary boxes, in order to be both concise and accurate. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Bill the Cat 7 (talk • contribs) 05:51, 1 July 2009 (UTC)

I do not acknowledge the concept of "mere" victory. Victory is victory. There are many degrees of success and repercussions (or ambiguities) that follow the victory and those can be described in detail in the Aftermath section, as in the quote above. Piling on adjectives--particularly ones with arguable definitions, such as decisive--in the information box is not helpful to the reader. Should this battle be "stunning Union decisive strategic victory"? Perhaps it was, but the reader should be encouraged to examine the results of the battle in more depth than the single phrase in the information box. Besides, if you look at the National Park Service summary of the battle, you will see they agree with this assessment. Hal Jespersen (talk) 15:35, 1 July 2009 (UTC)

If a victory is a victory, as you say, then why do so many of the ACW battle articles not follow your convention? I mean, the only thing we should see in every summary box should then just be either a Union or Confederate victory. This is inconsistent. I don't necessarily disagree that:

...the reader should be encouraged to examine the results of the battle in more depth than the single phrase in the information box.

However, let's apply that to all battles and not just here and there, or when some editor badgers us to make the result summary more than that. Either we simply say "Union victory" or "Confederate victory" or "Inconclusive", or devise some language standard that the results should be. After all, the only reason I made the suggestion on how a battle summary should be worded was because right now, there is no general rule - it simply appears to be just an editor's opinion.

I'll be happy to go through each ACW battle article and change it to either Union victory, Confederate victory, or Inconclusive, if you think that that is the way it should be. Let me know. Bill the Cat 7 (talk) 05:04, 2 July 2009 (UTC)

Of the 400+ ACW battle articles, there are actually very, very few that deviate from Union victory, Confederate victory, and Inconclusive, so I do not think this is a big problem. The most prominent one is Antietam and my file User:Hlj/Why#Adjectives explains why that is justified. I know of two in which I was unable to prevent the inclusion of "decisive" by a determined casual editor, but I relented by adding a footnote to explain what the word meant in that context (and in fact those two battles confusingly employ different meanings of the same word, which is a primary reason I don't like to use it). Wilderness is another exception and I would not object to returning it to just Inconclusive. In fact, with the exception of Antietam, I would be happy if we simply copied the result phrase from the CWSAC website that we use as a reference for all of these articles. However, I don't think the changes are worth any of the arguments that would result from them. There is plenty of substantive work required to improve Wikipedia ACW articles that would be more important than this. Hal Jespersen (talk) 14:37, 2 July 2009 (UTC)

Shelby Foote

I've talked to a Civil War historian about various topics, and Shelby Foote has come up on various occasions. This historian says that Foote's books don't provide sources and are thus considered fiction by many historians. Therefore, should we not be using his books as sources? Stevie is the man! ^{Talk • Work} 17:53, 26 August 2006 (UTC)

Discussion moved to Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Military history/American Civil War task force#Shelby_Foote. Stevie is the man! ^{Talk • Work} 18:12, 26 August 2006 (UTC)

Failed "good article" nomination

This article failed good article nomination. This is how the article, as of February 23, 2007, compares against the six good article criteria:

1. Well written?: Rather unencyclopedic in tone during battle description. Some WP:MOS issues.

2. Factually accurate?: Difficult to fully assess without cited references.

3. Broad in coverage?: Seems to be more or less thorough, although undue weight might be given to battle details.

4. Neutral point of view?: Appears to be, but lack of citation makes this difficult to assess. Adjectives are not carefully used, and often appear weasely.

5. Article stability? Yes, only vandalism reverting recently.

6. Images?: Both images have no problems.

When these issues are addressed, the article can be resubmitted for consideration. Thanks for your work so far. --Fsotrain⁰⁹ 20:04, 23 February 2007 (UTC)

Killed, Wounded, & Missing

The article's entries for the Confederates of 1500 killed & 4500 wounded should be 1500 killed and wounded and 4500 missing and captured. Livermore in Numbers and Losses in the Civil War in America, 1861-65 (p. 133) wrote that the Union army captured 4462 prisoners but does not give counts for Confederate killed and wounded. Recognizing that Foote did not provide specific sources, he quotes the same number of Confederate captured, gives "roughly 1500" as the total of killed and wounded, and 6000 as the total for all losses, implying 4500 for captured and missing. (Foote, Vol. 3, pp. 704-705) —Preceding unsigned comment added by StatsAce (talk • contribs) 11:34, 11 May 2009 (UTC)

You're right. Thanks for the correction. Hal Jespersen (talk) 14:09, 11 May 2009 (UTC)

citations and expansion

As part of my work on the Franklin-Nashville Campaign article, I have done some expansion of this battle article and added citations so that the warning boxes about references could be removed. Because of other work on my schedule, I will probably not return to this article in the near future, but it certainly is not written to the level of detail that a battle of this magnitude warrants. If others would like to pitch in, you are [always] welcome to do so. Hal Jespersen (talk) 00:32, 9 January 2010 (UTC)

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