Talk:US History/Civil War

Your section on McClellan is so filled with errors and mis-representations as to be laughable. That being the case, I did not bother to read the rest of your piece. Suggest you do a bit more homework in future. --

Would the user making the above statement like References? Perhaps if he or she would point out the specific "errors and mis-representations," one may attempt to amend them in to provide greater accuracy. Lord Emsworth

I changed the name of John (born Johan) Ericsson to the (dare I say) correct spelling (was Ericcson), but missed the summary box. The main wikipedia entry supports this spelling. It is also the spelling on his mausoleum in Filipstad, Sweden. Also his brother Nils, changed the spelling to 'Ericson' when he was knighted, something that John reportedly never forgave him for. In that light I find it unlikely that he would have let himself to be known under the name of 'Ericcson'. I do however find numerous sources on the web that lists his name with the odd spelling, so there might be a controversy regarding that on the other side of the atlantic? (Or is it just an early error that has been propagated?) I have several links to back this up, but as they are in Swedish it's perhaps not very useful to include them here. (I also went to the Nils Ericson high school, but that's another story).

I've been adding a few things to this section starting under 'Shiloh'. Let me know if this is all right, but I'm assuming so. There is a good article on the battle in Wikipedia (and probably on others) so what I have tried to do is a brief expansion of the section to set up the situation and then encourage use of the link. erraunt 16:27, 4 October 2005 (UTC)

Ran into the kilobyte limit when trying to edit this section. Are there any plans to create subsections? Any reasons not to before I start making more involved changes? Personally, if it is desireable to grow and develop this book, I believe it will be necessary to break this "chapter" on the Civil War out into multiple subsections to provide the space necessary for the topics. erraunt 19:56, 4 October 2005 (UTC)

I changed some misspellings on this page and corrected one error. Ben Butler, the Beast of New Orleans, was from Massachusetts, not New Jersey.

Technical firsts in the Amercan Civil War
According to the article the American Civil War was the first to see the use of flamethrowers, organised medical and nursing units and ambulance corps and the introduction of the income tax. This is incorrect, as the Chinese invented the flamethrower in the 10th Century (the following article has a picture of a 12th Century version: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Chinese_Flamethrower.JPG) and is attributed to have been first used in World War 1 elsewhere in Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flamethrower).

Furthermore income tax is reckoned to have been introduced by the Chinese (again) in the year 10 and used by the UK in the 12th Century, to fund wars against Saladin, and at the end of the 18th Century, to fund wars against Napoleon. Speaking of Napoleon, he introduced organised medical units and ambulances into his armies (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dominique_Jean_Larrey). Lastly nursing, specifically military nursing, was what Florence Nightgale (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Florence_Nightingale) became famous for in the Crimean War in the 1850s, so cannot hae been introduced during the American Civil War.

Due to these factual errors, the article stands somewhat degraded and should be edited following further research. 81.159.107.166 (discuss) 19:41, 4 June 2012 (UTC)

I'm going to try to amend it to *the 1st American use* of these things. Thank you. Pittsburgh Poet (discuss • contribs) 19:47, 28 June 2014 (UTC)