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A fact from this article was featured on Wikipedia's Main Page in the On this day section on April 9, 2006, April 9, 2007, April 9, 2008, April 9, 2010, April 9, 2011, and April 9, 2016. |
A fact from Battle of Appomattox Court House appeared on Wikipedia's
Main Page in the
Did you know column on 10 February 2005. The text of the entry was as follows:
|
This article has some serious run-on sentences. We need commas, STAT! I don't have time to do it now; hopefully, someone else can get to it first.
"Grant who's headache had suddenly disappeared when he received Lee's note arrived in a dirty private's uniform with only his shoulder straps showing his rank."
It's not mentioned previously that Grant had a headache. Does anyone know more about this? -- Arekku
I noticed that the "Casualties" column for the Confederate side lists 28,000. I assume that the intention here is to indicate that Lee's army surrendered, and so the entire army was a "casualty." However, I'm not sure that this is appropriate. I've always known casualties to mean soldiers killed and injured in action, and while I could see this being extended to missing and captured soldiers I don't think it applies well to an army that surrenders and is allowed to return home. Does anyone else have an opinion? Perhaps the best solution might be to give a figure for soldiers injured and killed, and then note that the army surrendered and was dispersed. TomTheHand 19:19, Feb 9, 2005 (UTC)
In both the Firefox and Opera internet browsers, the edit buttons for the first three paragraphs are in the wrong spot. In Firefox, they're overlapping the last battle section, and in Opera, all three are at the bottom of "The last battle" section. I checked in Internet Explorer, and it's working, so I don't know what's going on. Could someone please look at it?
I've included the actual text written by Grant to Lee in the McLean House, which was needed. The surrender was just too important to be stated as a minor entry. Could a separate article on the surrender be written, if not already? Carajou 05:14, 23 November 2006 (UTC)
True, and I thought of that after I included some of Grant's and Chamberlain's details. If I may suggest, since what happened at Appomattox is one of the most important days in this country's history, we go into detail by including as much as possible from those people who were there at the time, not just Grant and Chamberlain, but Lee, Longstreet, Gordon, etc. It should provide the reader with something that could be really used (like a kid doing homework). I think this should also clear up the grammar problem as well. Carajou 19:40, 23 November 2006 (UTC)
65.196.107.215 ( talk) 21:59, 15 April 2019 (UTC)
Minor edit of quotations from Gordon and Lee. I checked against what was written in Freeman's book on Lee as well as more current books for accuracy. Carajou 07:05, 24 November 2006 (UTC)
I have removed the following unencyclopedic editorial comment from the main article:
Before this paragraph is restored to the article, we will need to have some citations from secondary sources to back up this claim. We also can do without the POV opinions on the characters of Chamberlain and the other Civil War generals mentioned. Hal Jespersen 21:05, 6 December 2006 (UTC)
I support the argument that the 'salute' giving by the V corps never happened. Chamberlain's Passing of the Armies does tend to create some myths, as do many of the memoirs generated in the 1880s by numerous generals on both sides. Recent books support this. Just off the top of my head I can't remember sources, but I believe a good place to start looking is in the book Lee's Last Retreat. Thomas R. Fasulo ( talk) 00:47, 9 April 2016 (UTC)
I just took an editing pass over some of the recent additions to the article. In my opinion, we are adding too much detail about activities that are not directly related to the battle that occurred on April 9. I think it would be more appropriate to move most of the voluminous material (actually, a lot of detail has been omitted even from this lengthy description) about prior battles, surrender negotiations, and the following surrender ceremonies to the currently brief Appomattox Campaign article. It is on my to-do list to expand the campaign article and, unless someone beats me to it, I think this particular battle article should be focused much more sharply on the battle itself. Hal Jespersen ( talk) 00:13, 26 September 2009 (UTC)
The reason it makes more sense in the campaign article is that the prelude to surrender--all of the notes and responses and preparations to meet between the lines at various times--coincided with the results of three or four individual battles. Therefore, putting it all into the article about the minor battle that preceded the surrender, relying on a very long Background section to cover all of that information seems less than optimal. On a procedural note, I think you will find over time that writing articles and then going back later to add citation is actually more work. The first few hundred articles I wrote were in the early days of Wikipedia, when citations were not emphasized as being very important, and going back to improve those with reasonable citations has been a lot of work, which is not nearly complete after over five years.
I modified the formatting to match the formatting used by the original author of the work and of other comparable articles in the campaign and the American Civil War space. One of the tenets of Wikipedia editing is that if multiple formats are allowable, when you make incremental edits to an article you do not arbitrarily change them to another format, you conform to the format already in place. Hal Jespersen ( talk) 22:45, 26 September 2009 (UTC)
From WP:MOS:
Stability of articles
The Arbitration Committee has ruled that editors should not change an article from one guideline-defined style to another without a substantial reason unrelated to mere choice of style, and that revert-warring over optional styles is unacceptable.[1] Where there is disagreement over which style to use in an article, defer to the style used by the first major contributor.
If by "the only unsourced information that's been added has been added by you" you mean in the old days before citations were common in Wikipedia, you're right. If you mean in the last few days, I don't know what you're referring to and we should correct it, if so. I have no objection to good-faith content additions to this article or any article. I am merely suggesting that there are better places for such info, given the structure of the articles we currently have. Hal Jespersen ( talk) 22:14, 27 September 2009 (UTC)
That is really a very narrow view of the events of the campaign. After the debacles of Sayler's Creek and High Bridge, Lee was in active communication with Grant about the possibility of surrendering. This process coincided with at least three battles, each of which has a separate article. The military events of April 9 were a high-risk, last-gasp effort to break out of the Union army's grip, a possibility that Lee thought had very little chance of success. The battle lasted only briefly until Lee saw what he was up against and then he gave up. Hal Jespersen ( talk) 23:35, 28 September 2009 (UTC)
The general guideline we used for information boxes is to list the uppermost commander on each side. We sometimes list key subordinate commanders if they have some particularly noted role, such as command in an isolated part of the battle, or if a famous one is killed, such as Jackson at Chancellorsville. In the case of this minor battle, George Meade played almost no personal role. (He is not even mentioned in the main text of the article, other than an unlinked reference to his last name in the aftermath section.) Hal Jespersen ( talk) 23:25, 25 November 2009 (UTC)
One could make that claim for any of the subordinate commanders, but as I said above, our guideline to list only the uppermost commander on each side unless a subordinate had some unique contribution (and we don't do that very often, either). Hal Jespersen ( talk) 22:16, 13 December 2009 (UTC)
Am I the only American who remembers thinking of this as the end of the Civil War all through school - even in high school? If this is commonly taught, should it be noted, even if wrong, since it is a common point to this battle? I suppose that - even if it would be mentioned - we would also need sources which called it that, as well as reasons. I have none of the former, but of the latter, I think that it would be fair to say that: 1. Lee's army was the most important, and any extra was just mopping up. Sort of like the soldiers who kept fighting after V-J Day, though that, of course, is an extreme example; 2. Lee's Army was seen as even more significant because he was the head of all Confederate Armies - it was unlikely that anyone would keep fighting for many more weeks once he surrendered; 3. The main goal all along had been Richmond (though it fell on April 3, the ANV were the official defenders); and, though not quite as important, 4. Lincoln didn't live to see the others - if others are like me, that could be a reason. It's a little less sad to read about Lincoln's death if I consider that he lived to see the end - even if it wasn't officially "the end." 209.244.187.155 ( talk) 09:42, 4 August 2010 (UTC)
Does anyone know where this is? I keep looking it up but all I get is history on this place. I need it for my English paper. thanks! Mira ( talk) 05:15, 30 October 2010 (UTC)
A map of the battle would be a helpful addition. Dan653 ( talk) 12:31, 13 March 2012 (UTC)
An IP editor has been changing the Confederate casualty figures (killed and wounded) in the infobox from about 500 to 195 while leaving the source for the original figures, Salmon, Virginia Civil War Battlefield Guide p. 492 as the citation. Here is the URL/link for the source which clearly states "about 500." http://books.google.com/books?id=f_B3ToTmp1oC&pg=PA492&lpg=PA492&dq#v=onepage&q&f=false If this is in error and there is a better, reliable source that justifies a change, it should be cited. If the change is meant to refer only to the number killed, it would still need a different citation because that number (195) is not given in Salmon on page 492. Note, too, that Salmon refers to "casualties" with respect to the figures for both armies, so presumably that is the figure he believes is correct for killed and wounded for both sides, not killed for one and killed and wounded for the other. Donner60 ( talk) 12:08, 14 August 2012 (UTC)
The word "fias" appeared in the first paragraph, and I can find no meaning for it. It does not look like a misspelling to me. In addition there was a sentence fragment in the first paragraph of the "Background" section, which read "Confederate GeneralRobert E. Lee waited for an opportunity to leave the Petry turned Lee's flank at the Battle of Five Forks." I removed this. I hope some historian who knows this battle can correct these changes. Nick Beeson ( talk) 13:56, 18 October 2013 (UTC)
I'm not going to fix this because (insert whatever you'd like to believe here), but 'courthouse' is a single word. Writing it as 'court house' is an elementary-school mistake. I'll add that the article text is inconsistent, sometimes getting it correctly as one word, mostly splitting it in two. 99.66.150.5 ( talk) 15:31, 29 July 2016 (UTC)
The overwhelming majority of sources written in the past century has confirmed that there were only about 60,000 Union Soldiers present at Appomattox Court House at the time of the battle and surrender. 150,000 men is an absurd inflation, which is to be expected from a German book written more than a century ago that someone for some reason felt was a reliable source (Bodart, Gaston (1908). Militär-historisches Kriegs-Lexikon, (1618–1905). Stern.) Sukurabu ( talk) 13:02, 8 June 2019 (UTC)
Shum mishtake shurely! Boscaswell talk 22:37, 4 January 2020 (UTC)
The redirect Appomatox coart house surrender has been listed at redirects for discussion to determine whether its use and function meets the redirect guidelines. Readers of this page are welcome to comment on this redirect at Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2024 April 23 § Appomatox coart house surrender until a consensus is reached. Mdewman6 ( talk) 07:28, 23 April 2024 (UTC)
The redirect Battle of appommatox courthouse has been listed at redirects for discussion to determine whether its use and function meets the redirect guidelines. Readers of this page are welcome to comment on this redirect at Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2024 April 23 § Battle of appommatox courthouse until a consensus is reached. Mdewman6 ( talk) 20:17, 23 April 2024 (UTC)