Talk:Battle of Bean's Station

The main table lists Union casualties as 700, but the table breaking-down Union casualties by unit only lists 115 or so. Is this second table incomplete? Should it be labled as incomplete? Or is there something else that accounts for this discrepancy? --Cjs56 (talk) 00:17, 15 December 2021 (UTC)

• The table is compiled from the Official Records, which lists 115 Union casualties. Hess, p. 262 lists 290 Confederate losses. The 900 Confederate casualties comes from Smith p. 39. Since I do not have a copy of Smith, I cannot verify this. The 700 Federal and 900 Confederate losses are also listed in the Rickard source. Djmaschek (talk) 03:41, 18 April 2022 (UTC)

Incorrect citation

Currently, the following citation is attributed to Boatner, p. 53. "For the past few months of 1863, the Civil War had started to turn in favor of the Federals. The Confederates lost the Battle of Gettysburg and their hope of advancing towards Washington, D.C. This is often called the 'high water mark of the Confederacy'. The following day, the Confederates lost the city of Vicksburg to the Federals in a drawn-out siege. Having observed the Confederate defeat at Gettysburg, Britain had just declined to send any aid for the rebels." I have a copy of Boatner and can assure the reader that it does NOT come from Boatner, p. 53, which is the entry for Bean's Station. Boatner does not make ANY of these remarks at page 53. It is wrong and I will remove it. Djmaschek (talk) 03:51, 18 April 2022 (UTC)

(2) The following statement is lifted word-for-word from J. Rickard (2000) but attributed to Smith (1999), p. 39. "The successful Union commander at Knoxville, General Burnside, had been officially replaced before the siege, but his replacement, Major-General John G. Foster, had been stuck outside the town during the siege." It is my understanding that word-for-word copying is only acceptable for sources in the public domain. Djmaschek (talk) 19:58, 23 April 2022 (UTC)

(3) This statement is attributed to Smith (1999), p. 39, but is contradicted by Hess (2013), p. 210 and Rickard (2000) which say the battle started at 2 pm. "By 2:00 a.m. on December 14, one column was skirmishing with Union pickets."

(4) There were several statements attributed to Boatner, p. 53 that included brigade movements during the battle and other details like casualties. Boatner, pp. 53–54 does not include any such details, nor does he list casualties. These statements may have come from Smith (1999), and were attributed to Boatner by mistake. But since I do not have a copy of Smith, I have no choice but to delete the misquoted material.

(5) The 700 Union and 900 Confederate casualties listed by Rickard are frankly ridiculous. But they must have come from somewhere (Smith?). The Official Records (OR) lists the reported Union losses (115) and losses from Johnson's Confederates (222). To the Federal losses we must add those lost from the 117th Indiana (12 captured) and the wagon train (unknown). The Confederate cavalry notoriously never reported losses in the campaign, but probably lost only a handful. In any case, the OR cannot be that far off, so there is no reasonable way to account for the inflated 700/900 casualty totals. Nevertheless, I will keep those since they are cited. Djmaschek (talk) 20:54, 26 April 2022 (UTC)

(6) I retained all material from King, Rickard and Boatner that I could verify as correct. I also kept some material that had Smith citations. However, there were so many mistakes in the previous citations (wrong author cited, material not in the cited source), that I don't have much confidence in Smith citations. I hope they are correct. Djmaschek (talk) 04:58, 27 April 2022 (UTC)