Talk:General (United States)

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[edit] How many Generals

Having in mind President Bush' remark that "thousands and thousands" of Generals support Rumsfeld: how many Generals are there? 213.93.167.189 21:38, 14 April 2006 (UTC)

Actually, it was Rumsfeld who said, "out of thousands and thousands of admirals and generals, if every time two or three people disagreed we changed the secretary of defense of the United States, it would be like a merry-go-round."

I wondered too how many retired generals there are. I found a reference in the biography of Donald Rumsfeld, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rumsfeld. At the bottom of the page it says, "There are an estimated 3,100 to 6,300 retired military generals." (http://www.slate.com/id/2139847/sidebar/2140026/ Slate). But it doesn't necessarily follow that they all support Rumsfeld. Although retired and private citizens, many of them are probably still following the military code of conduct, and just not publically making their true feelings known.

[edit] Air Force and Marines

It states the functions of U.S. Army generals but it doesn't state the functions of generals from the Air Force or Marine Corps.

[edit] Grant

your information is wrong Grant was the first 4 star in history! Congress had actually had made it up for Grant so saying George Washington had a 4 star general is inaccurate and false... I suggest you change itr as soon as possible thank you.. July 25, 1866, Congress establishes a new rank of "General" for Grant making him the first four star General in U. S. history. http://www.granthomepage.com/grantchronology.htm

[edit] Merge

Wikipedia's articles on General (United States), Lieutenant General (United States), General of the Air Force‎, General of the Army (United States), and General of the Armies‎ all seemed to cover a lot of the same things, so I merged them. I have some new information that I want to add to these articles relating to the General of the Armies rank and the Civil War era General of the Army rank being similar. But I won't add that yet. So far I haven't added any new information to the article, I just merged the old information. I'll let people get used to the merge first, then consider adding the new information later. - Shaheenjim 00:32, 19 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Missing information

Who were the first three and four star Generals after Sheridan in the Civil War era? The article used to say that Pershing was the first four star after that, starting in 1919. But I don't think that's true. - Shaheenjim 16:37, 1 November 2007 (UTC)

Sherman was supposed to be the last four-star general, but Congress passed special legislation to promote Sheridan on his deathbed (after being assured that he really was on his deathbed). After that, the commanding general/chief of staff of the Army was a three-star, up until World War I, when Bliss and Pershing (and March) were promoted to give them parity with their European counterparts. If you haven't already, see Commanding Generals and Chiefs of Staff 1775-2005: Portraits & Biographical Sketches of the United States Army's Senior Officer, particularly the introduction. Morinao 17:34, 1 November 2007 (UTC)
That's interesting. I did some more checking, and the articles Commanding General of the United States Army and Chief of Staff of the United States Army confirm that there were several Lieutenant Generals between Sheridan and World War 1. However, it looks like there were also periods when the Commanding General of the United States Army or Chief of Staff of the United States Army were Major Generals (at least 1895-1903 and 1906-1917, then again for a short period after World War 1 from 1924-1926). Also, Schofield was the Commanding General of the United States Army after Sheridan (from 14 August 1888 – 29 September 1895), but this website from Commanding Generals and Chiefs of Staff 1775-2005: Portraits & Biographical Sketches of the United States Army's Senior Officer says he wasn't promoted to Lieutenant General until February 1895. - Shaheenjim 21:42, 1 November 2007 (UTC)
Commanding Generals is the Army's unofficial narrative, so I would give that source precedence over the Wikipedia articles for Commanding General of the United States Army and Chief of Staff of the United States Army, which are clearly using the book as their primary reference.
Husnock was correct; after Sheridan's death, Schofield commanded the Army as its senior major general from 1888 to 1895, before being promoted to lieutenant general in February 1895 as a retirement gift. His successor Miles then commanded the Army as a major general from 1895 to 1900, when he was advanced to three-star rank "under the provisions of a 6 June 1900 act that specified the senior major general of the line commanding the Army shall have the rank, pay and allowances of a lieutenant general" and was promoted to permanent lieutenant general in 1901. That law also advanced Miles' successor Young, who commanded the Army for one week before the title was changed to chief of staff. The next two chiefs of staff, Chaffee and Bates, held three-star rank, but after 1906 the highest rank was again major general.
In October 1917, Bliss and Pershing were both promoted to temporary four-star rank to give them parity with their World War I counterparts. In March 1918, March replaced Bliss and was promoted to temporary general as Army chief of staff, and Bliss went to Europe as a brevet full general. After the war, both March and Bliss reverted to their permanent ranks of major general when the World War I emergency legislation expired, but Pershing was advanced to General of the Armies. (In 1930, Bliss and March were restored to full general on the retired list as their highest World War I ranks.) Following Pershing's retirement, the highest rank was again major general from 1924 until 1929, when the chief of staff was again granted four stars and the incumbent, Summerall, was promoted to general.
All of this ground is covered in the introduction to Commanding Generals, or in the book's biographical sketches of individual officers:
If the commanding general's authority was circumscribed, so was his rank. When Sheridan took over the senior officer's position, he retained his three-star rank because of the Army Appropriations Act of 1870 provision specifying that "the offices of General and Lieutenant General of the army shall continue until a vacancy shall occur . . . and no longer. . . ." This stipulation made the ranks of general and lieutenant general personal to Sherman and Sheridan, respectively, with the four-star level lapsing at the time of Sherman's retirement.
Congressional sentiment against upper-level institutional rank, firm during periods of peace and routine operation, had a way of softening to meet special individual circumstances. As noted above, the Congress in February 1855 had revived the grade of lieutenant general, specifying that it could be conferred by brevet only, "to acknowledge eminent services of a major general of the army in the late war with Mexico." The honor was tailored for and bestowed upon Winfield Scott. Again, in February 1864, the Congress, with Ulysses Grant in mind, had revived the grade of lieutenant general in the Army of the United States so that it could be conferred upon a major general "most distinguished for courage, skill, and ability." The congressional action of July 1866 reviving the rank of general was intended for Grant as the victorious field commander in the late war rather than as the appropriate rank for the uniformed head of the Army. And now in 1888 the Congress, prompted by Sheridan's rapidly failing health, acted on behalf of the individual rather than the institution by discontinuing the grade of lieutenant general, merging it with the grade of general, and ensuring that the four-star billet go to Sheridan by stipulating that it should continue "during the lifetime of the present Lieutenant General of the Army, after which such grade shall also cease."
Sheridan's four-star rank was approved on 1 June 1888. On 2 August he signed the preface to his memoirs, and on 5 August 1888, still the Army's commanding general, he died. Nine days later General Schofield, the senior major general, was appointed to succeed him as commanding general of the Army.
...
John Schofield served the bulk of his tour as commanding general in the rank of major general. His performance so impressed his superiors that President Cleveland took the unusual step of recommending to Congress that the temporary rank of lieutenant general be revived in Schofield's behalf as "a just and gracious act" that would permit his retirement "with rank befitting his merits." Although the proposal called forth old and somewhat familiar objections, a joint resolution was finally passed and became law on 5 February 1895. General Schofield completed his military service at three-star rank and retired on 29 September 1895. On 5 October, Nelson A. Miles, the senior major general, assumed command of the United States Army.
...
Miles' propensity for keeping the government embroiled in front page disputes might well have soured his superiors to a point where they would have been disposed to deny him any further advancement in his profession. Such was not the case, and when the respective and normally antipathetic supporters of the Army's commanding general and its adjutant general-themselves instinctive opponents by virtue of personality, function, and the long history of departmental dissension-joined forces to move both officials up a notch in the ladder of rank, the executive branch placed no barriers in the way. Miles advanced to lieutenant general, Corbin to major general, on 6 June 1900, although not with a great degree of unanimity. The legislation took the form of amendments to the Military Appropriations Act of 1900, and on motions to disagree, Miles' promotion won out by a margin of 143 to 117, while Corbin's was approved by a vote of 107 to 61.
Morinao 21:49, 1 November 2007 (UTC)
Oh, looks like you found most of this stuff. =) Morinao 21:54, 1 November 2007 (UTC)
I think this is (at least part of) the information I wanted. Thanks. I'll go through the link and add some of it to this article. Not right now though. - Shaheenjim 22:04, 1 November 2007 (UTC)
Added. Thanks again. - Shaheenjim 19:44, 4 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Discussion area for United States General articles

Please see Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Military_history#Discussion_for_various_United_States_General_articles for a common discussion area. — MrDolomite • Talk 18:39, 19 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] A merge in disguise

This article is presently quite a mess and appears to be a "merge in disguise" where a few users have consolidated info from the General of the Armies, General of the Army, and Lieutenant General article all into one. I point out this was overruled on Talk:General of the Armies but certain users have gone ahead and done it anyway. Right now, large amounts of text are duplicate don more than one article which shouldnt be happening. A repair of all these articles is in order, hopefully without an edit war. -OberRanks 22:40, 1 November 2007 (UTC)

No repairs are needed, because nothing is broken. (Except that multiple articles all say the same thing, which should be repaired by merging them.) On 18 October 2007 I added information from other articles to this article. For example, I added the fact that Grant got the rank of General of the Army of the United States on July 25, 1866. But even before I did that, this article already covered the topics that were covered by those other articles. It just didn't have all the information. For example, it said that Grant got the rank of General of the Army of the United States in 1866. It just didn't have the exact date. See for yourself by checking the 12 October 2007 version of the article, which was before my edits.
I also changed the article's phrasing so it was equivalent to the phrasing on other articles. That way the need for the merge is more apparent to some people who are having a difficult time recognizing the need for the merge. But there's nothing wrong with changing the article's phrasing. - Shaheenjim 23:41, 1 November 2007 (UTC)
You have presently merged large sections of Lieutenant General, General of the Army, and General of the Armies all into this article,an action which is totally against the consensus on Talk:General of the Armies. This web site DOES NOT have multiple articles saying the same thing; such things are called "fork articles" and are completely frowned upon espeically since you were told the consensus was not to merge yet merged the article ANYWAY. Right now, you are seriously on the line with WP:CON and WP:OWN and pressing this forced merger can easily be seen as disruption by administrators. I have tried to fix this as best I can by removing the large amount of text which is presently duplicated on other articles. I will also ask other editors to comment. -OberRanks 02:27, 2 November 2007 (UTC)
Since you didn't seem to take anything from my previous message into account, and since it addresses everything you just said, I'll just repeat my previous message: (Removed Duplicate Text From Above)
Do this again and it goes to the adminsitrators. You are creating an unauthorized merger, POV forks, and violating Wikipedia policy. Please do not continue -OberRanks 03:00, 2 November 2007 (UTC)
You should probably respond to my previous message before you go to the administrators. Since you still haven't responded to it, I'll post it a third time: (Removed Duplicate Text from Above)
But here's some new information for you, since you don't seem to like the old information: If you continue to revert my edits while ignoring my message that explains why they shouldn't reverted, then I will take that to the administrators. You're the one who is out of line here. - Shaheenjim 03:47, 2 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Investigation into non-consensus merger

An investigation of this situation has revealed the following:

User:Shaheenjim (SJ) at first began a lengthy discussion on Talk:General_of_the_Armies#Second_Merge_Request regarding combining the articles General of the Armies of the United States and General of the Army (United States). From all directions this proposal was rejected by those involved with the article since it was agreed upon that the ranks were separate and should stay separate.

SJ then blanked the article General of the Air Force and proceeded with the merge anyway. SJ attempted to combine a multitude of the General articles and this reverted by several users. SJ was then strongly talked to under the thread Talk:General_of_the_Armies#Do_not_merge_without_consensus. SJ at first appeared to agree and understand but then, on October 18th, blanked the article Lieutenant General (United States) and redirected it to General (United States). SJ then copied large amounts of text from the General of the Armies article and merged it back into the General article, leaving the source articles untouched so as not to appear that SJ was merging but only “editing”.

When these changes and unauthorized merges were reverted, SJ began an edit war. In addition, several changes to the General article now appear to be moving towards POV, making this article a possible POV fork. This is also a sneaky attempt at merging, against WP:CON, and reverting to the unauthorized merger borders on violating WP:OWN.

We need to reach an agreement and stop this unauthorized and unagreed upon merges. I would like to keep administrators out of this, but a user merging without consensus is a cause for thier involvement. -OberRanks 03:15, 2 November 2007 (UTC)

You should probably respond to my previous message before you go to the administrators. Since you still haven't responded to it, I'll post it a third time: (Removed Duplicate Text from Above)
Copying the same response from above is pointless, but I willleave it here so others can see your edit patterns. Ive let as many people know about this that would be interested and we will now see what they have to say. -OberRanks 03:57, 2 November 2007 (UTC). Ive also reported it on the Wikipedia:Admin Noticeboard since we now apparently have three articles copied exactly on General, General of the Armies, and Lieutenant General in a sneaky attempt to have a merge. This has gone beyond content dispute and is now disruption. I will not edit war any furtherand let others give inputs as how to proceed. -OberRanks 04:09, 2 November 2007 (UTC)
I've been really busy on a couple of work projects and have not had time to keep up with this discussion. I'm of the opinion that what Shaheenjim writes has some merit and has certainly brought up some items that look like they are worth researching. I feel that the items he or she has found were not sourced well enough to justify massive (or any) changes to the articles but rather are research points to help locate original sources that could then be used as a foundation for edits to the articles. I also view the Wikipedia as a long term project. It might take five, ten, or more years to locate source/foundation documents and when they are found we will update the Wikipedia. I'm in no hurry as the articles about the various General ranks were reasonably accurate (as of a few weeks ago, I have not paid attention to the current edit war) and did not conflict with the existing/known/verifiable source material. One source of contention is that Shaheenjim states the that the ranks General of the Armies, and General of the Army are the same and the pages should be merged. There has been no source material found that states that General of the Armies, and General of the Army are the same rank. For a brief time Congress has said one rank or other was not needed but that does not make them the same. There were also times when Congress clearly recognized them as different ranks, such as in 1955 when considering legislation to promote General of the Army Douglas MacArthur to General of the Armies of the United States. In this sense, Shaheenjim's efforts to merge the ranks, failure to reach consensus with other editors, and the resulting wiki wars have been quite disruptive. Marc Kupper (talk) (contribs) 08:54, 2 November 2007 (UTC)
I'm mentoring Ober over an entirely unrelated situation, but was asked to take a look by both himself and Shaheenjim. Both views seem to have merit to my eyes (which are admittedly entirely unknowledgable on the topic). Perhaps sections within one article would be better (as opposed to one article treating the topic as a whole, or three small articles)? I've dropped a message at Wikipedia:WikiProject Military history, suggesting they take a look. Neil ☎ 09:13, 2 November 2007 (UTC)
(edit conflict and so what's here will overlap with what Neil just posted). I just took a quick look at Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Military_history#Discussion_for_various_United_States_General_articles and at the moment I'm fine with the level of discussion. Thus I'd like to revise my previous comment on this thread to be that while Shaheenjim's style tends to abrasive at times I agree with the general pattern of what he or she wants to do in documenting the history of the senior general rank on a single page rather than having redundant/overlapping text on multiple pages. That seems like a good idea though good luck as I'm sure there has been plenty of political back door intrigue that went into awarding the most senior ranks meaning locating decent/verifiable source documentation will be a challenge. Marc Kupper (talk) (contribs) 09:24, 2 November 2007 (UTC)
I too like the progress being made, but I think it is important to see that SJ very clearly broke WP:CON and attempted a hidden merge by merging everything onto the General article and then trying to hide it by carbon copying the same material on Gen Armies and Lieutenant General so as to appear as if the three articles were existing independently when in fact they were three copies of the same merged article. I am sorry if I am being a hard about this, but that slaps in the face of the work we did on Talk:General of the Armies to avoid this very occurence and despite what SJ may say or reasons that may be given, this was an attempt to circumvent the "no merge" vote and this is now the second time that this has happened. SJ isnt listening to a thing I am saying, and even went so far as to ask that I be banned from Wikipedia. With that said, I encourage others to speak with this user. WP:CON, WP:OWN, and WP:NPA are being skirted here if not outright ignored. Thank you everyone for your time with this. I will not bash on SJ any further as I think the point's been made. I also stand ready to work with that very same user to make this article better in the course we have agreed upon. Best to everyone then. -OberRanks 10:49, 2 November 2007 (UTC)
Marc Kupper: It's true that I think General of the Army and General of the Armies are the same rank, and others don't. However, none of the edits I've made recently say that General of the Army and General of the Armies are the same rank. So our disagreements about whether or not they're the same rank are not relevant to my recent updates. My recent updates just consolidated Wikipedia's information from multiple pages and rephrased things. For example, before my edits, this article said that Grant got the rank of General of the Army of the United States on 1866. My edits added the fact that it was on the specific day July 25, which I got from another article. And I phrased that fact the same way on both articles. I don't see why anyone would object to things like that. It's certainly not a violation of Wikipedia policies, as OberRanks keeps insisting. - Shaheenjim 15:29, 2 November 2007 (UTC)
  • Personally, going back and reviewing old edits and who did what when and why is not a valuable use of my time contributing to WP. Can we agree to disagree about different interpretations of the various United States' General ranks, but keep the past in the past and work on improving, clarifying and documenting sources to make these articles valuable to people looking for information? Even within the military and the government there are inconsistancies and discrepancies. Unless there is a "silver bullet" source stating these articles are the same ranks (personal bias, I do not think there is, nor ever will be), then let us leave them as separate articles. Updating and cross-referencing within this family of articles is just fine, it is taking advantage of the link-ability feature of WP, as it should. Even duplication of information is appropriate, where it helps clarify the relationship, or lack thereof, between the ranks. It is not like there are hundreds of articles and the information is changing every few days. Most of this is historical and from the various Talk pages, it appears there are enough editors with the pages on watchlists to prevent things from getting out of hand. Somewhere I read that someone, MarcKupper maybe?, mentioned that improving these articles is a long term goal, and I would agree with that. The basic information is in place and may need copyedits, cleanup and whatnot. Let's all, myself included, stop acting like children and stop looking to misinterpret edits and hidden rationales. Use informative edit summaries, proactive talk page comments, references and citations. Because if not, there are enough editors to wheel war and create an excess of information on any review, arbitration, mediation, whatever to make this situation a laughing stock of WP. And that doesn't help anything. — MrDolomite • Talk 23:59, 2 November 2007 (UTC)
An excellent mindset, that is a good way to proceed. Right now, these three articles have been so gutted and destroyed that it will take some time to repair them. Ive started by undoing the blanking of Lieutenant General (United States). General of the Army (United States) is still in a bad state and this article is a mixed merger of all three and will need to completely reworked. I agree that we shouldnt beat up on users from the past, people have been nice to me about that very same thing on occassion. I just wish SJ had listened to consensus and not attempted this merge since we have now seen the damage. May we all learn from this, then, and move forward. -OberRanks 08:48, 3 November 2007 (UTC)
No repairs are needed, because no damage has been done. Also, there were two people who said that we shouldn't merge the General of the Army article and the General of the Armies article. (Although when I explained why their reasoning was invalid, they were unable to respond. So I don't put a lot of stock in their position.) But I didn't merge the General of the Army article and the General of the Armies article, so that's not relevant. I merged both articles (and a couple others) with the General (United States) article. That was never even discussed, so it wasn't against consensus. - Shaheenjim 15:04, 3 November 2007 (UTC)
At least we have established an admission that a merge was attempted. I point out (again) merging the General articles (regardless of grade) was discussed on Talk:General_of_the_Armies#Do_not_merge_without_consensus, a discussion which you did not pay much attention to. I am also very disturbed that you went and reverted User:Marc Kupper edits [1] [2] who was only trying to help and whose opinion you have respected in the past. Work with us and not against us. Please. -OberRanks 15:22, 3 November 2007 (UTC)
I don't know why you insist on discussing the same topic on five different talk pages. This latest issue is already being discussed on talk:General of the Armies. I'll address it there. - Shaheenjim 15:54, 3 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Multiple merge attempts by certain users

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{{RFChist | section title = Multiple merge attempts by certian users !! reason = A merger was attempted by [[User:Shahennjim]] to combine material from [[General (United States)]], [[General of the Armies]], and [[Lieutenant General (United States)]]. SJ feels merger is warranted, at least two users do not. Outside comments are needed. !! time = 15:43, 3 November 2007 (UTC)}}

FYI, I'm happy with the current state of the articles. As long as they don't all say the same thing anymore, I don't feel a need to merge them. - Shaheenjim 16:00, 3 November 2007 (UTC)
Yet you are now reverting all changes not your own on General of the Armies. I think the two situations are linked. -OberRanks 16:13, 3 November 2007 (UTC)
First of all, I'm not reverting all edits that aren't mine. I'm just reverting the edits that make the article worse. If you don't want me to revert your edits, then stop making edits that make the article worse.
You arent reverting my edits, your reverting mine and the edits of two other editors. Also, I must point out that saying to an editor "Your edits make the article worse" is a violation of WP:CIV. You are edit warring and are now close to also breaking WP:3RR you are really not helping your case here. -OberRanks 17:15, 3 November 2007 (UTC)
Second, I'm not sure what your point is. Are you saying that I want to merge the articles, even though I said I don't want to merge the articles? If so, what do you think is my motivation for lying? Or do you think that it's appropriate to suggest that I want to merge the articles, even though I don't want to merge them? - Shaheenjim 16:52, 3 November 2007 (UTC)
Direct quote from up above: "I merged both articles (and a couple others) with the General (United States) article." If that is your no longer your intention, then great. But thats what you said you wanted to do in the first place. I really cant keep up with what your agenda is, only that its obvious you are edit warring these articles. -OberRanks 17:15, 3 November 2007 (UTC)
My subsequent statement, "I'm happy with the current state of the articles. As long as they don't all say the same thing anymore, I don't feel a need to merge them." overrides my eralier statement "I merged both articles (and a couple others) with the General (United States) article." I don't know why you'd have trouble understanding that. I thought it was pretty clear. - Shaheenjim 17:33, 3 November 2007 (UTC)
Oh, I missed that part above. Telling someone that their edit makes an article worse is not uncivil. Especially if it actually does make the article worse, and you explain why. If you're too sensitive to have your edits criticized, maybe you should stop editing Wikipedia. - Shaheenjim 20:30, 3 November 2007 (UTC)
You are very obviously not helping your case by telling another editor to stop using Wikipedia because they disagree with you. Enough said on this subject. -OberRanks 03:33, 4 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Missing information 2

1. Were there any Lieutenant Generals between 1909 and World War I, and if so, who were they and when did they receive their rank?

2. Who was the first Lieutenant General during World War I, and when did he receive his rank?

3. Who was the first Lieutenant General after 1920, and when did he receive his rank?

4. Who was the first General after 1920 (excluding Pershing), and when did he receive his rank?

Thanks. - Shaheenjim 19:46, 4 November 2007 (UTC)

From www.army.mil/cmh/books/AMH-V1/ch16.htm which is titled TRANSITION, CHANGE, AND THE ROAD TO WAR, 1902–1917. I'll just note the year and text snippet
  • 1909 - no relevant news reported
  • 1910 - Maj. Gen. Leonard Wood became Chief of Staff
  • 1912 retirement in 1912 of the leader of this opposition, Maj. Gen. Fred C. Ainsworth
  • 1913 - General Victoriano Huerta (Mexican General)
It looks Major General was the most senior rank active at the time you are interested in.
Unfortunately, there is no explanation or footnote on the nice list the CMH has at www.army.mil/cmh/faq/CGARMY.htm on why the list ends with Maj. Gen. Nelson A. Miles in 1903. The implication is that there's another list somewhere that continues from 1903 to present time. Marc Kupper (talk) (contribs) 20:18, 10 November 2007 (UTC)
The list picks up at Chief of Staff of the United States Army, which starts in 1903. - Shaheenjim 22:35, 10 November 2007 (UTC)
Excellent and thank you. Doesn't that list answer your questions though? It looks like there were no LTG from 13 April 1906 (when Bate's term ended) to some time on or after 23 September 1917 when Tasker H. Bliss was jumped from MG over LTG to GEN and we don't know if possibly there were LTG then underneath him. I suspect there were none as in 1924 MG John L. Hines was appointed chief of staff. The implication is there were no LTG or their terms were short (possibly cut off by WW-I).
re: question #2 - were there any LTG at all during WW-I?
re: question #3 - The Marines List could be mined to at least get dates of promotions where we can then look at the other services to see if they also used LTG the same way. I took a quick look at the deceased section and under that the full generals. The pattern was
Admittedly, the sample size is very small and I did not even look at the 27 deceased LTG nor the retired lists to see if there's helpful data. Marc Kupper (talk) (contribs) 23:15, 10 November 2007 (UTC)
The Chief of Staff article doesn't answer my first question, because the Chief of Staff wasn't always the highest ranking officer in the Army. For number 2, there were some Lieutenant Generals during WW1. Hunter Liggett, for example. And for number 3, I'm only interested in the first Lieutenant General after 1920, not the ones in the 1970s. - Shaheenjim 23:44, 10 November 2007 (UTC)

I'll expand the Lieutenant General (United States) article with the long answer to these questions, as time permits. Short answers are as follows:

  • 1. No.
  • 2. Hunter Liggett and Robert L. Bullard both served as emergency lieutenant generals in the National Army from October 16, 1918 to June 30, 1920, when all Regular Army officers were discharged from the National Army.
  • 3. After 1920, the first active duty Regular Army lieutenant generals were Hugh A. Drum, Stanley H. Ford, Stanley D. Embick, and Albert J. Bowley, who were each promoted to that temporary rank on August 5, 1939 while in command of one of the four armies of the United States Army.
  • 4. Charles P. Summerall was the first general after Pershing, receiving his rank in February 1929 as the serving Chief of Staff.

Regarding the Commanding General/Chief of Staff lists: beginning in 1901, the rank of lieutenant general went to the senior officer in the Army, who traditionally also served as the commanding general/chief of staff. When Bates retired in 1906, the rank of lieutenant general came unmoored from the position of chief of staff when the new senior officer, Henry Corbin, decided to keep the rank but allow a younger man to serve as chief of staff so as to provide continuity of leadership for longer than the few months remaining before Corbin's retirement later that year. Following Corbin, Arthur MacArthur succeeded to the rank. Congress halted further promotions the following year and the rank expired when MacArthur retired in 1909. - Morinao 04:22, 12 November 2007 (UTC)

So from October 1917 to October 1918, and from 1929 to 1939 the US had Generals but not Lieutenant Generals. Interesting. I added the info to this article. The Lieutenant General article's history section is just a link to this article's history section, so you don't have to update it separately. Thanks for all your help. - Shaheenjim 05:25, 12 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] General lists

I was wondering if you think the existing list is incomplete enough that the article or section should be tagged {{underconstruction}}? Marc Kupper (talk) (contribs) 23:34, 8 November 2007 (UTC)

Nah. There's only a little bit of missing information. And the information already there isn't misleading. Plus, hopefully we'll get this new information soon. The user Morinao seems to know lots of stuff along these lines. I asked him and I'm waiting on a response. - Shaheenjim 02:27, 10 November 2007 (UTC)
Have you see http://www.army.mil/cmh/faq/CGARMY.htm. This is from U.S. Army General Officers on the Army Center for Military History (CMH) site.
Cool - Over the past couple of days I've been trying to see more of the big picture (see the list on User:Marc Kupper) and one of the things I saw is that this page is largely about what we'd call "general officer (United States)" and has very little data on the specific rank or grade of "General (United States)" or Four star general. In the long run I suspect much of the data on this page should move to one of General officer (United States) or the more generic General Officer and/or Army General pages so that this page can focus on four-star generals.
The current four-star generals seem to be
The data above for the Marines is likely to be complete and the Army plus Air Force need serious research time or I did not immediately spot full lists of general officer like what the Marines made available. Marc Kupper (talk) (contribs) 08:16, 10 November 2007 (UTC)
Yeah, I'd seen your link (or other things that were similar to it). It's similar to the Wikipedia article Commanding General of the United States Army.
It's true that this article is about General Officers in the generic sense of the word, in addition to four star Generals in particular. If you want to move this article to General Officer (United States) and create a new article for four star Generals in the United States, I wouldn't object. But I don't really see any need to do that. I don't think four star Generals in the US need an article of their own. There isn't really anything that needs to be said about them that couldn't be covered on the generic page for General Officers in the US. Just like one and two star Generals in the US don't have their own page. They just have sections on the pages for the international articles for one and two star Generals.
Note that the international concepts of General Officers and four star Generals are also covered in the same article. A few weeks ago I edited that article to make the distinction more clear. Although even before my edit, it still covered both concepts.
I'm not particularly interested in lists of current four star Generals. But if you are, note that Wikipedia already has lists of them in the following pages, which are linked at the bottom of this article:
List of United States four-star officers
List of United States Army four-star generals
List of United States Marine Corps four-star generals
List of United States Air Force four-star generals
- Shaheenjim 16:11, 10 November 2007 (UTC)
Thank you. That all makes sense and I'm in general agreement with it. It looks like people have spent time researching Lieutenant General (United States) and there's enough information there to justify an article on LTG but there has not been a similar effort towards the higher rank of General (United States). Probably because it's harder to Google up "General" and get relevant data (signal to noise issue). As there was not even a section of text about the rank of General I've added this at the top of the General (United States) article plus a header that allows this to flow into the main article about general officers of the Unites States. Hopefully that'll be enough of a start so that people can later fill this out enough to create a standalone article and General officer (United States) can then become it's own article using the material that's already on this page. Marc Kupper (talk) (contribs) 21:48, 10 November 2007 (UTC)
I'm not sure what you mean. The Lieutenant General (United States) page doesn't have any more information on Lieutenant Generals than the General (United States) page has on four star Generals. The only thing it really has that this page doesn't is a list of famous Lieutenant Generals. - Shaheenjim 22:42, 10 November 2007 (UTC)
Right now there are (or were) linkable sections of text, or full articles about each individual general officer rank. You just deleted the section dedicated to the highest active rank in the United States military which is General. It looks like you are actively trying to prevent any effort towards eventual creation of a page about this rank by deleting even the smallest start towards an article. I know the text section I added was partially duplicated from what's in the table below but that's currently the only information we have about this rank. I really don't care where the section about General, the rank, is on the page. I had put it on the top of the page and added a lead-in from that to the sections on general officer. It looked like a clean way to do it that would make sense to people coming to this page to learn about the subject of General (Unites States). Please either revert your last revert or add a section at the bottom (or anywhere else) of the General (United States) article about the rank of General. Also, I come back to this page to add one more line to the section on this rank (before discovering you had deleted it). When you restore the section please add this line.
The rank of General is used in the Army, Air Force, and Marines. The equivalent rank in the United States Navy is Admiral.
That will get the General section consistent with the wording used for other general officer ranks. Thank you. Marc Kupper (talk) (contribs) 23:41, 10 November 2007 (UTC)
I didn't delete the info on four-star Generals in the introduction because I don't want people to start an article specific to Generals. I deleted that info from the introduction because the same info was already located in the body of the article, and it didn't belong in the introduction. As for your suggested additional line, that information is already in the article. The introduction says, "The one-star through four-star General ranks are used in the Army, Air Force, and Marines." And the section "Navy Equivalent Ranks" says "The rank of General is equivalent to the U.S. Navy's rank of Admiral." - Shaheenjim 05:30, 12 November 2007 (UTC)
If you hadn't already noticed, note that I added a line to the introduction explaining the difference between a General Officer and the specific rank of General. - Shaheenjim 05:50, 12 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Official rank names

Is there a difference between the rank "General of the Army of the United States" and the rank "General of the Army"? Was Grant's rank officially called "General of the Army of the United States" or just "General of the Army"? And was Eisenhower's rank officially called "General of the Army of the United States" or just "General of the Army"?

I'm sure that some people often use the two terms interchangeably, but I'm not sure that's correct. I think Grant's rank could only be given to one person at a time, and Eisenhower's rank could be given to multiple people at one time. I wonder if that difference was reflected by different titles? - Shaheenjim 05:35, 12 November 2007 (UTC)

"General of the Army of the United States" refers to the four-star grade held by Grant, Sherman, and Sheridan; and was a revival of the grade created in 1799 for Washington, "General of the Armies of the United States."
"General of the Army" was a new grade created in 1944 for the five-stars of World War II. "General of the Army" was its complete name, although its naval analogue was titled "Fleet Admiral of the United States Navy".
Confusingly, there was also the rank of general in the Army of the United States, held by the temporary four-stars of the World War II conscript army.
Morinao 06:38, 12 November 2007 (UTC)
  • For the Eisenhower-era rank, it is officially "General of the Army", per s:Public_Law_78-482 which enacted it. And the naval equivalent is "Fleet Admiral of the United States Navy" — MrDolomite • Talk 13:35, 12 November 2007 (UTC)
That's what I suspected. But is the difference in rank names significant? Is it really supposed to reflect a difference in the meaning of the rank? Or am I just making something out of nothing? - Shaheenjim 15:49, 12 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] History of United States Generals

I have moved the original content of this page to the History of United States Generals to help make this page conform with the other United States ranks in Wiki. I have made a note in the History of United States Generals discussion page to credit all the original authors of the article. Neovu79 (talk) —Preceding comment was added at 00:49, 22 December 2007 (UTC)