Talk:Plight of the common soldier in the American Civil War

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Civil War Infantryman posted on August 25, 2006.--James L. Burgess 07:55, 25 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Focus of article

I have done some minor editing for punctuation and links, but there are some fundamental problems with this article that the original authors and editors ought to address. It actually says very little about infantry tactics and weapons and emphasizes anecdotes that could apply equally to artillerymen and cavalrymen. For instance, infantrymen did not die of disease at any higher rate than cavalrymen, as far as I know. (Furthermore, information in the lead paragraphs -- those that precede the table of contents -- should be summaries of the article that follows and this information about disease is not covered later.) Similarly, the sections on Mutual respect and Appomattox are also not infantry centric. I think you should concentrate on that information about tactics, equipment, and characteristics of the soldier that are unique to the infantry. Otherwise, this article should be titled something like Plight of the common soldier in the American Civil War. Hal Jespersen 01:29, 23 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Title of Article

Hello,

I have changed this article's title to "Plight of the common soldier in the American Civil War" at Hal's suggestion. Hal's new title for this Article does seem more appropriate. Thanks for the suggestion and contributions. This is greatly appreciated.

--James L. Burgess 05:06, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

Hmmm, I was actually being facetious. Maybe I should have used a smiley face. I think a better solution is to go back to the original title and adjust the content to fit it. The topic of infantry tactics, weapons, etc., is actually useful, assuming it can be limited to strictly infantry topics. Unfortunately, you'll probably need an admin to assist in reversing a rename. Hal Jespersen 14:20, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Reworked article; please aggressively edit it!

See Infantry in the American Civil War. I took a very rough crack at reworking this article to be more of a companion to the Field Artillery in the American Civil War and Cavalry in the American Civil War. It certainly needs much more polishing (footnotes, more references, added detail and perhaps more sections, but this is a start for you readers to use as a baseline for future edits. Type away! Scott Mingus 01:19, 18 November 2006 (UTC)