Wikipedia:WikiProject Military history/Peer review/Battle of Raymond

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[edit] Battle of Raymond

I have finished fleshing out all of my citations, so please perform a peer review of this article at your earliest convenience. Thanks! Tony Gunter

  • Please see automated peer review suggestions here. Thanks, AZ t 22:41, 30 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Kirill Lokshin

Very nice, but there's a variety of incidental things that need to be cleaned up before this would be ready for a A-Class or FA nomination:

  • {{Infobox Military Conflict}} should be added.
  • Disambiguation keys should generally be hidden when linking in text. For example, John Gregg (CSA) should be linked as John Gregg.
  • One or more maps would be appropriate here; it's somewhat difficult to keep track of the geography otherwise.
  • Massive wikification of geographic features, people, and units is needed. Pretty much everything at the regimental level and above has (or should have, eventually) its own article, for example.
  • External links to content (e.g. Randal McGavock) should be avoided. If something is worth discussing, create an article on Wikipedia for it.
  • Footnotes must, above all, avoid being cryptic. Things like "OR Series 1 - Volume 24 (Part III) Chapter XXXVI page 638" are absolutely meaningless to anyone who doesn't know what OR refers to.
  • Multiple footnotes in the same place (e.g. after the first paragraph of the lead section) should be combined into a single note.
  • The references should be more specific; the articles, in particular, need to have dates indicated. The website used as a reference also needs to be fully cited (with date of access and so forth); but, as it's just a copy of a published book, I'd try to cite the book directly instead.
  • There are some examples of speculative or judgemental language present throughout the article that need to be eliminated (or else cited to the historians making such judgements). Some of the more obvious examples:
    • "what must have seemed like a stroke of luck at the time"
    • "his men must have been strickened with horror at their mistake"
    • "Luckily the creek made a turn here"
    • "wild with their easy victory"
    • "General Logan must have been near panic"
    • "A timely bullet"
  • More generally, overly lively language (e.g. "The presence of artillery could only mean one thing: the force occupying the field before him was no mere raiding party, but at least a full Federal brigade.") should be avoided in favor of a somewhat drier formal tone.
  • Some citations for the "Battlefield preservation" section would be nice.

Overall, the material itself is quite good, though; once the incidental issues are resolved, I think the article should have no trouble with an A-Class or FA nom. Kirill Lokshin 03:22, 22 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Hal Jespersen

A related note on footnotes: I think that Kirill's concern about the cryptic nature of the OR footnotes should be satisfied by including the following Reference prior to the Notes (which I see you have done):

However, please note that the Official Records are actually primary sources, not the secondary sources that Wikipedia prefers for citations. The ORs are the written reports or correspondence from the participants, in some cases edited for personal or political advantage by those participants long after the fact. They are essentially raw data that are equivalent to letters from soldiers or personal memoirs. Therefore, an article that is documented primarily with the ORs is not relying on the scholarly analysis of professional historians who interpret them along with other primary sources to draw conclusions. Just as an example, I have found that many casualty figures cited in the ORs have been superseded by more careful analyses by historians. WP:RS implies that the ORs should be used only for purely descriptive claims. I have not evaluated the specifics of the citations here. Perhaps they are all legitimate, but the overwhelming bulk of OR cites in relation to the secondary sources seems troublesome. Hal Jespersen 17:19, 22 October 2006 (UTC)

A couple of more comments:

  • You should take care to use correct ranks for generals, identifying them as Maj. Gen., Brig. Gen., etc., rather than simply General.
  • I find it useful to include geographic coordinate links in battle articles so that readers can see them in online maps. See Battle of Vicksburg for an example of how to include them in External links. Hal Jespersen 17:19, 22 October 2006 (UTC)
I can certainly understand the concern you guys have with using the OR as the primary reference for a wiki article. However, because this battle has been largely ignored in the historical literature, there is only one secondary source of analysis on the battle. This analysis can be found in Ed Bearss' three-volume set on the Vicksburg Campaign, and it is riddled with counter-factuals (not simply problems of interpretation, but assertions that can be directly refuted from the primary source materials). With almost no revision, Bearss' flawed analysis of the Battle of Raymond has been propagated into many subsequent works, the most recent being Timothy Smith's book on the Battle of Champion Hill. The problems with Bearss' take on the Battle of Raymond being what drove me to write this wiki in the first place, then I am loathe to make this wiki a regurgitation of a highly flawed secondary source.
Thanks for your input! Tony Gunter
I think the most sensible thing would be to note the historiographical issues explicitly within the article. In other words, rather than giving a straight narrative, make statements in the form "According to Bears, .... However, other sources state that ...". This would provide the full detail of the different accounts, while at the same time avoiding a judgement as to which of the sources is necessarily the most accurate version of events in case of disagreements. Kirill Lokshin 00:02, 23 October 2006 (UTC)

I agree with Kirill on this. When there are disagreements among historians, you need to highlight such differences. Otherwise, by selecting your own view of the narrative, you are violating WP:NPOV and performing original research. I find it rather shocking to hear that the most revered living ACW historian, Ed Bearss, is accused of bollixing up a battle history, but will be interested to see how you portray this. By the way, other secondary sources you can cite are:

  • Ballard, Michael B., Vicksburg, The Campaign that Opened the Mississippi, University of North Carolina Press, 2004, ISBN 0-8078-2893-9.
  • Eicher, David J., The Longest Night: A Military History of the Civil War, Simon & Schuster, 2001, ISBN 0-684-84944-5.
  • Grabau, Warren E., Ninety-Eighty Days: A Geographer's View of the Vicksburg Campaign, University of Tennessee Press, 2000, ISBN 1-57233-068-6.
  • Isemann, James L., "Battle of Raymond", Encyclopedia of the American Civil War: A Political, Social, and Military History, Heidler, David S., and Heidler, Jeanne T., eds., W. W. Norton & Company, 2000, ISBN 0-393-04758-X.
  • Kennedy, Frances H., ed., The Civil War Battlefield Guide, 2nd ed., Houghton Mifflin Co., 1998, ISBN 0-395-74012-6.
  • Korn, Jerry, and the Editors of Time-Life Books, War on the Mississippi: Grant's Vicksburg Campaign, Time-Life Books, 1985, ISBN 0-8094-4744-4.

Hal Jespersen 01:07, 23 October 2006 (UTC)

I will look into some of these other sources, but thus far I have only found sources that are tertiary sources more or less derivative of the information in Bearss (including Ballard and Grabau, and, not listed by you, Smith, Winschel, Shea, and just about every subsequent historian who has touched the Vicksburg campaign). I'm not sure why you would be so shocked to find errors in Bearss' section on Raymond, given that it represents a handful of pages in a three volume set (and thus represents a fraction of the effort he put into research on the campaign). The simple fact of the matter is those few pages contains at least 17 assertions that are either unsupported or directly refuted in the primary source material. As far as NPOV concerns, I can certainly understand the concerns you would have with matters of interpretation, such as value judgements, a point raised by Kirill and well taken. But the bulk of this article is taken straight from the primary sources with little interpretation. Tony Gunter

You may have difficulty coming up with a good Wikipedia article if almost all historians agree on a version of events and you disagree. You are not allowed to say, "Historian Smith states that [assertion] is true, but the following primary sources refute him." And you should not say directly that [assertion] is true, footnoting a primary source, and neglecting to point out that most secondary sources disagree with that assertion. You need to say something like, "Historian Smith's contention that [assertion] is true is refuted by historian Jones, who cites the official report of General Mumble and diaries from the 50th Tennessee." Otherwise, you are performing original research. One way around this dilemma, which I admit is not simple, is for you or an ally to write an article or book on the subject, have it published, and then cite that as a secondary source. But unfortunately, Wikipedia is not the place to right perceived historical wrongs. If all of this seems too cumbersome and roundabout, it would probably be acceptable to cast the majority of the article in what you believe is an appropriate interpretation of the primary source and have a section toward the end called "controversial historiography" or something in which you highlight the differences that the secondary sources have in a more general way. (It is difficult for me to make specific advance judgments in this case because I do not yet know what types of assertions you claim are in dispute.)

A few more comments about the article that may prove helpful.

  • For a battle article of this length, I find it appropriate to establish more of a background of who the opposing forces are and how they come to the fighting. Although you technically have a lot of the background information included, and indirectly pointed to by the Vicksburg Campaign article, it is a bit scattered around the first half of the article and I believe that a number of readers would find themselves confused as to the context unless this material becomes more concentrated. I find it is useful to paint a rough picture of the order of battle of the opposing forces, not to the extent of a full list down to the regimental level as some people do, but at least the generals at the corps and division levels.
  • Using the map from the Vicksburg Campaign article would be useful to set early context on this battle. The Grabau book I list above has an extensive series of battle maps about the tactics at Raymond as well.
  • The use of section headers should make it easy to navigate through the article, but the oddly named "Chaos and irony" section does not help much for someone wishing to find the beginning of the battle description. We normally use drier descriptions, such as "Morning battle" or "Union assault."

Hal Jespersen 00:40, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

"Almost all historians agree" is a misleading statement. Bearss wrote a particularly bad interpretation of the Battle of Raymond as part of his three volume set on the Vicksburg Campaign, and the battle has been too small a fish for any other historian to fry. Most indicative of how bad Bearss' take on the battle: he places the federal artillery 1/2 mile away from the Fourteen Mile Creek Bridge, when several primary sources indicate the artillery were unlimbered a very short distance from the bridge. At first glance, Grabau appears to offer an independent examination of the battle in "Confusion Compounded" (which is essentially just an expanded version of his chapter in "98 Days"), and in fact he adjusts the position of the federal cannons, but much of his interpretation of the battle is inherited from Bearss, a close personal friend. No other historian has taken a serious look at Raymond. I think I'm having trouble understanding why using published primary sources would be considered "original research," especially if the secondary sources have identifiable errors. Worst case, though, I write an article dissing Bearss ... any suggestions on the venue? :) Tony Gunter
It's not so much that using published primary sources is original research—as long as the claims are purely descriptive, that sort of thing is permitted—but rather that deciding that Bearss is wrong and should be ignored is original research unless we can reference a reputable historian that's come to that conclusion.
That doesn't mean, of course, that we need to blindly follow Bearss' reconstruction; but we cannot omit it entirely, since NPOV requires that articles include all major viewpoints on the topic. My recommendation, then, is to give both versions in the text and let the reader decide which is the more accurate, should they wish to (e.g. "According to Bearss, the federal artillery was situated 1/2 mile away from the Fourteen Mile Creek Bridge. A number of primary sources, however, place it much closer to the bridge." and so forth). Kirill Lokshin 15:21, 24 October 2006 (UTC)
(Kirill and I typed our replies almost simultaneously.) I based my phrase "Almost all historians agree" on your assertion that there are no secondary sources for you to cite that are unaffected by the Bearss influence. If I misunderstood your remarks and there are in fact secondary sources that agree with your interpretation of the ORs, then you have no problem because you can simply cite those secondary sources. If you are footnoting an assertion with a primary source because all known secondary sources disagree with you, you have a duty to the reader to point out this discrepancy. This is relatively easy to do; see the footnotes for Battle of Gettysburg for examples (such as #14) on reconciling differences between sources. If you wrote an article on this topic for a magazine, you would not need to "diss" Ed Bearss, you would simply offer a new interpretation based on your research. There are a number of magazines to consider. I believe the one that is most credible to historians is North and South. Hal Jespersen 15:37, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] oldwindybear

This is a classic example of problems where there is a dearth of secondary sources. Hal covered the issue well on secondary sources and wording. I have run into this problem myself - the best way around it is to use the method employed by the footnotes for Battle of Gettysburg for examples (such as #14) on reconciling differences between sources. You can also quote primary sources, as long as you clearly identify them as such, and let the reader decide whether the historian or the primary source was correct. old windy bear 15:58, 11 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Gw099

Good article I've added a Infobox to the page, please help finishing filling out the box--Gw099 01:52, 27 October 2006 (UTC)