Talk:43rd Virginia Cavalry Battalion

Substantial additions
With deference to my predecessors I found this page rife with factual errors. Mosby's men did NOT wear disguises as a previous contributor said (except in the rare instance of escaping from a Federal prison), nor did they depend entirely on "stealth tactics." The first pistol shot was the end of stealth. They used pistols rather than sabres because sabres were hopelessly ineffective, not because the pistols in holsters were quieter when riding than sabres in scabbards. In fact a sabre in use is considerably quieter than a pistol--but against a pistol it seldom gets a chance to be used. Possibly the worst sin was treating Mosby's Command as if it were a regular identifiable army unit, marching together in neat lines to orderly battles. The reason they so angered the Federals was they did not keep together as a regular army unit would, easily found, attacked and defeated. Instead they raided, then disappeared to hide among civilians. The memoirs and histories make it clear these were young men in love with dash and daring, and that the prospect of loot was a significant motive--but they were not what one would call regular soldiers, in discipline or deportment. To be sure they had officers ranked in the Confederate army, but "guerrillas" was a term of opprobrium at least one of them came to accept. They were more like a militia, boarding by twos and threes with local farmers, and banding together in groups of 20 to 30 (seldom as many as 100) when an opportunity arose. I have added factual detail, to make the article both more accurate and more human, giving the reader a taste of what the fighting was like.ElijahBosley (talk) 18:48, 30 March 2010 (UTC)

Tone of article
This article seems well-researched as far as it goes, but the sources seem limited, with small exceptions, to the adulatory. The claim that "everybody" agreed with Lee about Mosby's daring, for example, seems rather a stretch; there are suggestions that some viewed his tactics as approaching cowardly. The article also seems to rely too much on the reminiscences of the members of the unit (likely to be rosy) as to their exploits. While the quotes may well refer to "Yankees", the text itself should not: it's an unencyclopedic nickname and, as used here, bears a pejorative animus as well. I have made some edits, but do not know enough about the subject matter to do much more. --Piledhigheranddeeper (talk) 14:26, 25 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the detail, and the change from a neutrality box to a tone box: very helpful and I think I agree. One contributing factor, or an additional problem, may be format. The quotes are in blue boxes normally used for Great Words, signature quotes like Martin Luther King's "I have a dream" speech. Blue boxes in this context overemphasize what is quoted.  Reducing them to regular block quotes will help.  I will attend to this in the next few days: family issues will keep me away from the 'puter for a while. ElijahBosley  (talk &#9758;)
 * An additional factor/problem/issue may be that the article was begun by Grayghost01, who has been roundly criticized on other pages for rabid partisanship, among other traits. --Piledhigheranddeeper (talk) 18:37, 26 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Reading through the article I see one clear offender: under "Notoriety" there is a glowing praise quoted from a Virginia newspaper, but no couterbalancing account from the northern papers which would have treated Mosby as a plunderer and killer operating at large. When I have the time I will check the library for a balancing Northern paper's view. For the rest I see the block quotes could and should easily be reduced and summarized, and that will go a long way toward improving the tone. I have to go deal with a funeral this weekend though so it'll be next week before I can attend to this. ElijahBosley (talk &#9758;)  13:18, 27 October 2011 (UTC)

Bad Agendas written in to this article
Hello folks, I'm not a wiki-writer. I just use it from time to time. But I am familiar with problems when some pages have points of view and agendas written in to them, and the American Civil War articles are rife with these problems. You'd think the war was still on. This article on the 43rd Battalion is generally very good, but someone has done their best to wreck the ship, nevertheless. A paragraph in this article goes off-track and attempts to paint a picture that these soldiers were "guerillas". Anyone familiar with the writings of the war knows this word was used extensively and daily in newspapers, official US Army reports and accounts to refer to not just uniformed soldiers of the CS Army, but to any and all people of the South. To discuss the use of this term in this article is a coy trick to insert an agenda, intended to disparage, vice simply communicate good Wiki information about this topic. "Guerilla" was so commonly used as a term in this war, that it cannot be said, at all, that this term applied to, or was used more commonly for any one unit or group in the war, than any other. If editors continue to keep this slant and bias in the article, and contiue deleting other fair contributions which are neutral, then my comment here serves as a marker to future editors of the proof of the problem in this page, and the particular set of self-chosen watch-guards who intend to keep it here, while pretending they are not the root cause of the problem. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2001:5B0:22FF:3CF0:0:0:0:37 (talk) 16:29, 3 February 2013 (UTC)

"Guerrilla"
There has been some discussion by an IP address editor on the use of the term "guerilla." First, may I welcome that editor to Wikipedia and thank him for the useful footnote he provided. The paragraph needs a little work, as it is unclear whether the word 'guerilla' was--at the time--a term of opprobrium, in the mouths of the Northerners who used it to describe troops of the seceding states. But to avoid alienating a new editor who is making a good faith contribution, I won't do any stylistic tinkering for now and let him decide how the paragraph ought to read. I would like to refer him to this page on why it is a good idea to edit under a User Name account. With best wishes, ElijahBosley (talk &#9758;)  17:38, 3 February 2013 (UTC)