Talk:Appomattox campaign

Updating

In conjunction with maintenance and upgrading that I am doing for the Siege of Petersburg article and its related battle articles, I am also planning to convert this campaign as well. Although anyone is welcome to participate, I expect that this effort will take me until at least July. Hal Jespersen (talk) 02:31, 27 May 2009 (UTC)

Requests for assessment

The article lacks the {{Infobox military conflict}}, for a quick reference on the most important details. The first section is unreferenced, and the following ones are too small. We don't need an individual section for each battle, if they can't grow more than this, seek a way to merge many into a single section. "Aftermath" has text sandwiched between images. The "notes" should not be just links, add more info ({{Cite web}} can be helpful, although not mandatory). The books in references should be books actually used for the article, that may be hold in doubt if no footnote mentions them. Cambalachero (talk) 05:01, 15 January 2012 (UTC)

Revision and References Under Construction

I have revised and expanded the background section and provided numerous citations and references. This gives a more complete picture of the events that preceded and resulted in the Appomattox Campaign, especially the Siege at Petersburg. I plan to revise and provide references for the individual actions of the campaign although I intend to make any expansions as limited as possible. I will consider revising the lead section when the work on the article is completed. As part of this project, I will work on revising and expanding those of individual articles about the battles and incidents of this campaign which need additional detail and references. Then I will revise the summary for that article that is provided in a section of this article. Since this could take some time, even though I plan to give it some priority, I ask that editors and readers keep in mind that the article will be under reconstruction for awhile. Donner60 (talk) 02:58, 10 November 2013 (UTC)

IMHO, you are including too much detail of past events in the background section. When I wrote these campaign articles originally, I chose to describe the previous campaign with only enough detail to set the immediate stage for the current campaign. Going back multiple campaigns, to May 1864, is excessive. I mean, if you need to describe how Grant was promoted, for instance, why don't you include information about the success of his 1863 campaigns? Or describe in detail how the 1862 Peninsula campaign was (somewhat) similar to the 1864 Overland campaign? Because of the hyperlinking architecture of wikis, it is really unnecessary to create standalone articles that provide voluminous details that are already covered in articles one click away. The focus in improving these campaign articles, which were designed to be like "survey courses," ought to be on expanding the brief battle descriptions and adding text that provides more context about what happened between the battles and why. Please accept my constructive criticism in a friendly way. I have taken my name off the maintenance list of the top of the talk page, because I do not have the time available to continue active work on this article. Hal Jespersen (talk) 16:12, 29 November 2013 (UTC)

I have been working, both in the Lewis's Farm background and offline, on a more compact background statement. I think that readers who come to this article as we get closer to the 150th anniversary will need some background as to how the war got to this point. I am not so confident that all, or most, will click back to the other articles. However, I have thought that I might cut this background back because it is more than necessary for a lead in to the final campaign. Also, my recently posted Battle of Lewis's Farm background section might get cut a little. Removal of the subsection headings, which are like an outline, probably would be an improvement since the subsections are already briefer than the Appomattox background sections, and also include some of the immediate background on troop movements. If Lewis's Farm is supposed to be the first battle of the campaign, however, a little more background than for other battles (not more than is there already) might be appropriate. In any event, I don't disagree that some editing would be useful.

I want to cut back the backgrounds of Namozine Church and Amelia Springs which I wrote when I was just starting on Wikipedia. While I think they would be ok as stand alone articles, those articles aren't distinct or important enough to be so categorized. I considered Namozine Church to be the real start of the campaign, but I now doubt that many readers would really go to that to start reading about the Appomattox Campaign when the campaign article, and some of the books on the subject, start with Lewis's Farm or Five Forks. I treated Amelia Springs as somewhat stand alone and that, of course, is too much. That background, with is much like Namozine Church, needs to be taken out almost altogether. I do not want to work on this until I get to those articles because I might want to put something in the background so I don't want to simply remove the existing background and go back to it later. Luckily, I suppose, these are not too many articles down the line. They may be about the only two that I might subtract from rather than add to. In any event, my view of what should be in these articles, at least in the background, has changed.

I am glad you mentioned the need to add what happened between some of the battles. I had thought that this needed to be added. While creating additional articles would not seem to be appropriate, this information could be included in the battle articles and in the campaign article, either within the battle summaries or in a few cases, perhaps in stand alone sections. I have already done a little of that with Lewis's Farm and with my draft of White Oak Road on which I have made substantial progress.

There might be a few possible additional articles with respect to this campaign but I doubt that I will create them. One, either through a more distinct section or a redirect or both, or perhaps a separate article, might be the Battle of Painesville. It is somewhat distinct but seems to get lumped with Amelia Springs in most books although I have seen it discussed distinctly a few times. Thus, two separate actions at separate times of day in the vicinity of Amelia Springs, but not really at exactly the same location, need to get described. Another could be to split off Fort Gregg but perhaps a redirect, if there isn't one already, would make more sense.

With about 14 articles including the campaign article, and only a few that are anywhere near complete, especially with respect to sourcing, it will take a while to revise and expand them. Even then, they will need some editing and some consideration will need to be given to how they fit together and how they may be read. While I suppose I could try to do them all offline and put them all up at once, it seemed a little more logical - or at least I would think I was making a little progress - if I put them up one at a time and tweaked them as I looked back at them over time. As I did with the Lewis's Farm section in the campaign article, I would revise, expand a little and reference each section as I completed the article. I may consider some other approach if it seems like I am going down the wrong path.

Your observations and advice are always useful and welcome. Your writing skill would be most valuable. But I know you have other projects and can't write everything. I think I can contribute the research and a decent enough writing job to improve the articles - and given how little has been done on Civil War articles in recent years, I am not sure there is much other interest. (I have had two or three articles in progress that got pre-empted by someone else's posting, however.) Since you had mentioned the desirability of adding to and better sourcing these articles on your list, I know that you think some additional information and sourcing is appropriate.

I hope you are doing well and that your mapping and other projects are going well. I have bought a couple books knowing that your maps were in them which would add to the value. I also have seen a few nice comments about the maps in Amazon reviews, as well. Donner60 (talk) 10:21, 1 December 2013 (UTC)

Thank you for the kind words on my mapping. Things are going very well in my little retirement hobby/business. Including Wikipedia, I have done over 1000 maps! If you are familiar with any of the books using my original maps (versus black-and-white adaptations of Wikipedia maps), you will see that I am using rather different styles than I use for Wikipedia.

One additional thought on this background information discussion. The lower you get in the article hierarchy (war overview, theater, campaign, battle), I think it is likely that less background is actually needed. Someone who would open the Lewis's Farm article will probably be either knowledgeable on the war in general, or will have linked into that article from one of the higher articles. Yes, there will probably be some readers who are driving around Virginia, see a roadside sign about a battle, and pull up Wikipedia on their smart phone to go directly to that article. However, they will probably not have much patience for extensive background sections. (As an aside, if the community wished to make significant improvements to articles for general readers, probably the most valuable thing they could spend their time on is to improve the section leads, because I am sure that many readers do not get very far past that information. Lewis's Farm is an outlier here, because the lead is about three times longer than it should be.) This will not be the case for big, famous battles, like Gettysburg, but Lewis's Farm is pretty obscure unless you are a GK Warren fan. Hal Jespersen (talk) 17:42, 1 December 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for your additional thoughts. I hope I don't sound like I am just giving similar thoughts simply to agree or to take up your good suggestions as if I had thought of it myself. I realize the value of your suggestions. Sometimes they make clearer some points I have already begun to think about. So I may have thought about these thins and agree with you, at least in large part, but still not have come to a complete realization of what to proceed with next.

Since I do most of the writing offline, and that means that all of the citations are embedded in the text which can obscure the actual and relative lengths of the text, it sometimes takes me some additional readings of an article after it, or its revision, is posted to realize that some additional work is necessary or desirable. I prefer to avoid repeated tweaking and delay offline after a certain point but also to avoid numerous online edits - if that makes sense. Nonetheless, I will say that I had the same thought about the introduction to Lewis's Farm - that it should be trimmed - as should the background. In fact, that shorter background might be a good starting point for a reduced background for the Appomattox Campaign article.

My initial thought in creating or revising an article, and that one specifically since it is most recent, is to follow the guideline that the lead is supposed to summarize the article. But then the introduction and article itself have detail and citations. So there has to be an introduction to summarize and show notability but the article, including background, can be too repetitive if the introduction is too long. I appreciate your thought that a too-introduction could put off a reader.

It takes me a little longer than others such as yourself to come up with a version that I think, and others might think, is satisfactory. You are an excellent writer which complements your knowledge of the material and your research. That is a high standard to try to reach at the outset. On the other hand, I do not think that leaving an article untouched until I can come up with that version is necessarily the best choice, especially when the article is short. As I noted, not many others have seemed very interested in adding to short articles on the Civil War recently and I think I can make a worthwhile contribution to these articles.

One thing that work on a series of articles, and hierarchy of articles, at the same time is accomplishing for me is to bring to mind the value of trying to keep the introduction and background as short as possible while still trying to convey a good amount of information.

I have in mind working on trimming the Appomattox Campaign and Lewis's Farm background, as well as finishing the White Oak Farm revision, as my next steps. There is not much to be gained by going forward with other work on this topic when the revisions are now in mind and work on the later articles will not add much if anything in the way of information or perspective for the revisions. Again, I probably will not be able to do all of this overnight, so to speak. That is a reason why I thought I had better jump ahead and work on this now rather than wait until the 150th anniversary is near.

Your map-making is prodigious as well as excellent. It is a great contribution to Wikipedia, books in which the maps appear, and some other web sites if I am not mistaken. This is a great educational benefit because anyone with the least interest in the Civil War, and military topics in general, is aided by good maps. One need only read some of the favorable and negative comments about maps in various books on Amazon to come to that conclusion. Donner60 (talk) 21:42, 1 December 2013 (UTC)

I have cut the background and will probably take another look at the first two paragraphs after I do a little more work on other articles which I have worked on, Lewis's Farm in particular. The first two paragraphs may still be a little longer than necessary and might be cut or compressed. The rest of the background is either information that was already in the article or is from the time period from Fort Stedman to Lewis's Farm so it is pertinent to the start of the campaign. Donner60 (talk) 08:42, 3 December 2013 (UTC)

Revisions and References Under Construction: Update

After considerable delay, I have revised the first parts of the article which I believe are now clearer and more in line with the discussion above. I assume I may need to make a few minor corrections or revisions when I re-read the revised part of the article. I plan to proceed with some revisions and additions to the articles about the battles, including a few more subsections about important occurrences on the few days when there were no battles and aside from actions in the battles themselves. I also plan to cut back the introductions to a few of the battle articles that I wrote at earlier dates but to expand a few of the other articles which are rather brief. Just to start, the first article which needs revision, the Lewis's Farm article, has too long an introduction and needs some reorganization at the end as well. I can be critical because I added most or all of the extra content. Because I did not get to this work at an earlier date (although I did some reading) I will need to work diligently at the revisions because I want to have them done by the end of February or mid-March at the latest because the 150th anniversary of these events begin on March 24 with Grant's initial orders for the offensive. Donner60 (talk) 09:00, 4 February 2015 (UTC)

I may separate the substantive notes from the citation footnotes because I think that format, which is used in a few of the longer articles, may be easier to follow here. Any comment will be welcome. Donner60 (talk) 09:06, 4 February 2015 (UTC)

I did not quite make the full expansion of this article and related battle articles by the 150th anniversary as campaign article is linked on main page today and the later paragraphs of the article, after April 1, are still mainly "stub-like". I put expanded article on Third Battle of Petersburg up just a short while ago. The later battle articles need various amounts of expansion and some correction or revision. I will get as much more information into later days' summaries as I can as quickly as I can. I also will be working on articles for later minor battles, plus Sailor's Creek and Appomattox Court House as quickly as I can. I wish I could have gotten it all expanded by today but real life intervened some over the past two months. And I felt as if I should do a comprehensive job on these articles. Overall, and despite my long background sections, I suppose the current article and related articles are more informative and better presentations for the project than they were a few months ago. I will finish as soon as time permits, perhaps putting up some information quickly and getting it in proper form and well cited a few days later. Donner60 (talk) 10:00, 29 March 2015 (UTC)

Additions for March 30, 1865

I plan to add much of this new content as background to Battle of Dinwiddie Court House and Battle of White Oak Road. In turn, that should enable me to cut down this section without losing the content altogether. Enough happened on March 30 for a few more additions and a stand-alone article. The prelude of March 29 and March 30, with some discussion of Lewis's Farm, is a whole chapter in Bearss's book. That really would not work as a stand-alone article in Wikipedia, however. Donner60 (talk) 23:24, 12 February 2015 (UTC)

Individual battle articles

The wiki articles on the individual battles of the Appomattox campaign are seriously unmanageable, too densely written, and the ledes are at least twice as long as they should be - except, for some reason, Sailor's Creek, which is much too short. I tried to lengthen it, but found the main article quite impossible to summarise. A bit of editorial leadership needed here, I think. Valetude (talk) 00:38, 18 December 2015 (UTC)

Lincoln meeting with Grant, Sherman and Sheridan in March, 1865

President Lincoln at Genl. Grant's headquarters

I found an interesting c.1865 Currier & Ives lithograph at the Library of Congress which I've put on Wikimedia Commons that shows a meeting of the four in March, 1865. Grant, Lincoln and Sheridan were in City Point on March 26th (Greene, p. 151), but Sherman didn't arrive until the 27th (Harris, p. 197). It likely happened on the night of March 27th, or possibly on the morning of the 28th (Greene, p. 151), since Sheridan's forces were near Petersburg on the 28th (Harris, p. 198) as in article: Although delayed by a train derailment, Sheridan met with Grant and Sherman at City Point late on March 27 and on the morning of March 28 when he again opposed joining Sherman's forces in North Carolina despite some effort by Sherman to persuade him to take that course of action (Greene, p. 151). This lithograph could be added to the article; however, I haven't found another source—aside from the picture itself—placing all four in the same room. Any thoughts? MrFrosty2 (talk) 00:13, 21 February 2016 (UTC)

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Unconditional Surrender??

How was the surrender of the Army of Northern Virginia "unconditional"? Grant and Lee were exchanging correspondence and both came to mutually-agreeable terms on which Lee would surrender. That's not "unconditional". -- Veggies (talk) 14:50, 28 March 2020 (UTC)