Talk:George Meade

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[edit] Name of article

General Meade's full name is George Gordon Meade.

And that's what it says at the beginning of the article. [[George Gordon Meade]] redirects to [[George Meade]]. Ideally, the article should be under his full name, but it would need an administrator to do that, as we would want to move George Meade to George Gordon Meade, which already exists as the redirect. -- Dalbury(Talk) 19:20, 29 January 2006 (UTC)
The issue is not what his full name is, but what he is best known as. I would agree that he is probably best known by his full name as George Gordon Meade, and will move if there seems to be a general consensus to do so. john k 20:24, 29 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] West Point

I wonder how he could have been graduated at the age of 19. Were the age-requirements lower at that time?--Anglius 23:35, 21 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] With Grant

Under the paragraph heading ‘With Grant’. There is a statement that says: (and that Sheridan, his junior, was promoted to permanent major general before he was).

I checked with the reference Eicher & Eicher, Civil War High Commands and it states that Meade’s commission was dated 23 Sept 1864 while Sheridan’s was dated 8 Nov 1864. Meade always outranked Sheridan. This line should be removed. Dmercado 03:40, 30 June 2006 (UTC)

In his Memoirs, Grant said that he requested that Meade be made a permanent Major General immediately after Spotsylvania, concurrent with Sherman. Despite what this entry says of their relationship (I'm not disputing whether they had a contentious relationship), Grant spoke very warmly of Meade in his Memoirs - referring to him time and again as "The Gallant Meade."Khan_singh 01:09, 19 May 2007 (UTC)
I have elaborated on the sequence of events and cited the Grant memoirs. The significant change is the date of Grant's request. Thank you for that research. There is some interesting detail in Grant's biography by Jean Edward Smith. Henry W. Halleck informed Grant confidentially that there were two slots available for permanent major general and that there was some political sentiment in Washington that these promotions be given to Daniel Sickles and Benjamin Butler, the intent being to dilute the influence of West Point graduates in the high command. Grant was adamant that Meade and Sherman get the appointments and sent his political mentor, Elihu Washburne, to lobby with Lincoln. The reason the dates of appointment lag the original request significantly is that the government wanted to wait for demonstrated success in the Atlanta Campaign and the Overland Campaign prior to committing the promotions. Smith indicates that Grant approved of this delay. Hal Jespersen 16:45, 19 May 2007 (UTC)

[edit] updated -- lighthouse refs?

I have done a significant upgrade on this article. If the person who originally added the two books on lighthouses would like to adjust footnotes appropriately and move those back into the References section, that would be fine with me. I have access to neither of those books, so could not use citations from them in this edit. Hal Jespersen 00:54, 18 September 2006 (UTC)

I can take care of the florida lighthouse references, although I think I just returned one possible source to the library yesterday. -- Donald Albury 02:00, 18 September 2006 (UTC)

Thanks, but as you can see from all of the other footnotes in the article, the way I have it organized is the bibliographic information on the book is covered in the References section and the footnotes themselves carry only the author's name and the page numbers. Can you please update accordingly? Thanks. By the way, since this is such a small part of the article, if one of those references covers the subject, two footnotes will not be necessary. Hal Jespersen 14:31, 18 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Happy Birthday

Happy Birthday to George Gordon Meade, born on this day in 1815! Hal Jespersen 18:03, 31 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] record

The following paragraph was modified on May 2 to add the sentence beginning "Notably..." I have removed it for the following reasons:

For the remainder of the fall campaigning season in 1863, during both the Bristoe Campaign and the Mine Run Campaign, Meade was outmaneuvered by Lee and withdrew after fighting minor, inconclusive battles, because of his reluctance to attack entrenched positions.[1] Notably, while in command over the Army of the Potomac (opposed to being a subordinate commander under Grant, McClellan, Burnside, etc.) Meade is distinguished for never having lost a battle to Lee.
  1. It is a non sequitur. Following a sentence that describes two failed campaigns against Lee is not the place to claim that Meade is distinguished for never having lost a battle.
  2. It is a clumsy construct to talk about command of the Army of the Potomac in this way. Meade never gave up command of the Army of the Potomac for the rest of the war. The only arguable command relationship in the list of examples given was Grant, who was not in command of the Army of the Potomac, although he did give orders to Meade and the other subordinate generals (Burnside, Butler, and Sheridan). Furthermore, a case can be made that some of the blame for the loss at Cold Harbor can be attributed to Meade.

If you assume that Meade was not responsible for his conduct under Grant (which I do not), about the only statement of this type that one can make with impunity would be to reverse its sense: "In 1863, Meade was the only general to defeat Lee in a battle." (In 1861, McClellan defeated Lee in the West Virginia campaign. In 1862, McClellan defeated him at Beaver Dam Creek and Malvern Hill, although his Peninsula Campaign did not go well overall.) If the editor of this revision would like to pursue a statement of this type in a more appropriate location, please provide a citation from a secondary source for the claim. Hal Jespersen (talk) 14:49, 2 May 2008 (UTC)