Talk:Battle of Gettysburg, first day

Shoes, again

There was no shoe factory or warehouse in Gettysburg. Had there been a surplus of shoes in town, I would think they would have been cleaned out by Brigadier General John Gordon's brigade when they came through Gettysburg five days earlier. Certainly Heth could have been duped by a rumor or even made the shoes an excuse for his blunder that started a full scale fight. But nonetheless the mention of this part of the battle, needs to be removed. --Asososocrates 05:16, 26 April 2006 (UTC)

Well, that's why it says "ostensibly." Heth's memoirs says that was the reason, so some deference needs to be paid. There are a number of secondary sources that cite the shoes as the reason for the advance, so we can't perform our own original research to delete the historical claims, but we can water them down, which we did. Hal Jespersen 14:33, 26 April 2006 (UTC)

Menchey's Spring

I'm not entirely sure why User:Hlj claimed that the soldiers being shot by a sniper at Menchey's Spring was not relevant to this article - is it the day of the shooting that is contested, or simply its importance? Bearing a monument in the park today, I would assume its notability is verifiable, so do I have the date incorrect? Sherurcij ^{(Speaker for the Dead)} 11:53, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

The day. Sorry that my edit summary was terse. Any notability of the tiny spring monument would apply only to the Cemetery Hill#Second day article. Hal Jespersen (talk) 12:30, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

No problem, thanks. It was the complete lack of context about why the spring had a monument, that made me curious and want to mention it on Wiki. I'm sure a number of visitors from the fields come back confused as to what Menchey's Spring was, or why it had any notability. Sherurcij ^{(Speaker for the Dead)} 00:20, 27 March 2008 (UTC)

Survey

WP:Good article usage is a survey of the language and style of Wikipedia editors in articles being reviewed for Good article nomination. It will help make the experience of writing Good Articles as non-threatening and satisfying as possible if all the participating editors would take a moment to answer a few questions for us, in this section please. The survey will end on April 30.

• Would you like any additional feedback on the writing style in this article?

• If you write a lot outside of Wikipedia, what kind of writing do you do?

• Is your writing style influenced by any particular WikiProject or other group on Wikipedia?

At any point during this review, let us know if we recommend any edits, including markup, punctuation and language, that you feel don't fit with your writing style. Thanks for your time. - Dan Dank55 (talk)(mistakes) 03:52, 21 April 2008 (UTC)

GA Review

GA review (see here for criteria) (see here for this contributor's history of GA reviews)

1. It is reasonably well written:

   Pass The article looks very good here.

2. It is factually accurate and verifiable:

   Not Yet Is there any way you could add more refs to some of the paragraphs? I understand that a lot of the information probably comes directly from the source material. However, there are a lot of long paragraphs with a single source on them; it would be best if there a reference for every statistic, name, and other detail that is not common knowledge to the average person who knows nothing about the battle. I know that this will mean that you have to add some refs that seem redundant, but it makes the article much more verifiable if multiple references are cited in each paragraph several times, corroborating the same details.

3. It is broad in its coverage:

   Question: Is there any way you could find information on any kind of "pre battle background" or "post battle effects" and make them into brief sections? The information is very broad on the battle itself, and I know that it is a sub article of the overall Battle of Gettysburg, but it should also be very clear and s person should know the background and details by looking at this article alone.

4. It follows the neutral point of view policy:

   Pass both sides are represented well.

5. It is stable:

   Pass no problems there.

6. It is illustrated by images, where possible and appropriate:

   Pass no problems there.

7. Overall:

   On Hold See about the above things, the article is just about good to go otherwise. -Ed!^(talk)_{(Hall of Fame)} 00:50, 24 April 2008 (UTC)

After taking another look at the article, I feel that it is now of sufficent quality to be GA. Congrats! -Ed!^(talk)_{(Hall of Fame)} 18:57, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

Blocher's Knoll

The article supposes that Francis Barlow made a grave mistake by taking his division to Blocher's Knoll, however, in retrospect, we must consider what Barlow saw when he arrived north of town. Barlow saw Shimmelfennig's (Schurz's) division in skirmish line, to his left, short of its original goal of Oak Hill, because of the presence of massed Confederate infantry and artillery which had arrived before those elements of the XI Corps. Immediately to his left was Krzyżanowski's brigade, of Schimmelfennig's (Schurz's) division, sitting like turkeys in a game shoot for the Confederate artillery on Oak Hill.

Schurz was new to corps command, and didn't appear to be able to concentrate on anything but his previous divisional command, as it was being shelled to death by the Confederates. He did not issue new orders to Barlow, given the change in circumstance which had occurred on the field. To Barlow's right was Devon's cavalry, set up along the York and Hanover Roads to warn of Early's approaching division. Barlow had a choice to link up with Shimmelfennig's skirmishers and leave his flank exposed to the Confederate artillery which would soon occupy Blocher's Knoll, which would, in turn, leave Devon's flanks in the air, or he could take that height and deprive the enemy of an artillery platform which would devastate Shimmelfennig and Robinson. Barlow would have supposed that Krzyżanowski would shortly be linking up between him and Shimmelfennig, as he was sitting there without further orders.

It wasn't until Barlow set up his position, that Devon ran like the devil was on his heels, using as an excuse a vague order that he was given to remove himself from the action. In fact, no order was ever mentioned by either Howard, Doubleday, or Buford, and none has ever been found. We now know that Howard ordered von Steinwehr's artillery to engage Early's division, as they approached the field of battle, and that artillery had been shelling Devon briefly in an incident of friendly fire.

At the same time, as Barlow's ranks were breaking from a well-coordinated attack from two divisions, Krzyżanowski finally set his troops in motion to shore up the defense... but it was too late. Once Barlow's ranks were broken, the entire line began to crumble and retreat through town to von Steinwehr's position on Cemetery Hill. However, if you trace the line of battle from Robinson, through Shimmelfennig's skirmishers, to Devon, Barlow made an excellent decision to take Blocher's Knoll.

Had Devon not found a reason to disappear, and had Krzyżanowski moved forward to shore up the center of the XI Corps line, things would have gone a bit differently, and nobody would be calling Blocher's Knoll, Barlow's Folly. Schurz later noted "that Barlow conducted the movements of his troops with the most praiseworthy coolness and intrepidity." - William R Wade (talk) 23:22, 1 July 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for your explanation and opinion. The Wikipedia article is attempting to present the consensus of the secondary sources that are cited in the article. If you have secondary sources that provide alternative views, you are welcome to add them with the appropriate citations. Hal Jespersen (talk) 00:29, 2 July 2013 (UTC)

Off the top of my head, this would be the first place to start. http://www.militaryhistoryonline.com/gettysburg/articles/barlowsknoll.aspx. Contemporary sources, otherwise known as the officers on the field that day, would make statements about the move in the negative. Devon gave a poor excuse for why he failed to protect Barlow's flank the way that Gamble had been doing on the left. And Schurz certainly wasn't going to admit that he had simply forgotten about Krzyżanowski's brigade, nor giving an updated order to Barlow. Howard wasn't about to explain why he was busy with Doubleday, and von Steinwehr, and paid no attention to the issue of Krzyżanowski's brigade sitting there on the north end of town, twiddling its thumbs. Krzyżanowski wasn't going to explain why he failed to take initiative, as Barlow did, and move his brigade into position to support his division and that of Barlow. Human nature is unfortunately rife with the vice of personal pride. Personal pride is what drives the general consensus on this matter. William R Wade (talk) 22:32, 4 July 2013 (UTC)

Okay, looking into this some more, it is apparent that the simplistic leveling of blame against Barlow is not warranted. This article devotes six relatively short paragraphs to Early's attack against the XI Corps. What is your recommendation about how to resolve this? Going into a lengthy description of his thought processes and the motivations of the people who disagreed with him after the war does not seem appropriate to me. (This is a portion of an encyclopedia article after all, not a magazine article or book devoted to this subject.) We could water down the "serious misjudgment." Thoughts? Hal Jespersen (talk) 17:08, 5 July 2013 (UTC)

Good Morning Hal,

The problem with XI Corps at Gettysburg is that there is almost no primary material describing the actions of the corps in actual, factual detail. You almost always get a short description about how "Howard's Cowards" routed, as they (supposedly) did at Chancellorsville. To give a little psychological background on this phenomenon, Germans and Irish were not well received by America, even into the 20th Century. Germans, specifically, took a good thrashing during WWI through domestic policy (ie. banning of the card game Pinochle in Schenectady, New York, and of the German language in F&AM Lodges).

What is important to note is that most of these immigrants were Forty-Eighters, and enjoyed veteran military status, unlike many of the other volunteers units on the field that day -- or any day preceding it for that matter. They did not simply break and rout. While the retreat through town to the heights was disorderly, it was by no means a rout. The scenes you hear about (or sometimes see in paintings, drawings, et cetera) were a consequence of troops getting jammed up in the center of town.

XI Corps fought all the way through town to Stevens Run, where Coster made his valiant stand, and then further to Cemetery Hill. Little primary material is devoted to this part of the action, hence the brief commentary in the article. You have to look at secondary sources, or have to ask a knowledgeable Ranger. This is one of Gettysburg's dirty little secrets.

I'm thinking that watering down the language would help, but a further brief description of why Barlow took the knoll would shed some light on the issue, and hopefully inspire future generations to do more research, to fill in the blanks, as it were.

Barlow was a well-accomplished officer, having been raised from the rank of Private at the beginning of the war, to Brigadier-General by the time of the Battle of Gettysburg. He took artillery shrapnel to the face and grape-shot to the groin at Antietam, at the center of the Sunken Road, while leading his troops from the front, swinging his sword in the air. Even his contemporaries would not question his devotion, his steel resolve, or his skill as a commander. He deserves better than this.

William R Wade (talk) 13:40, 9 July 2013 (UTC)

I will take a stab at beefing this up and clarifying a bit over the next few days. One of the challenges of writing these Wikipedia articles, rather than, say, a magazine article, is that you need to balance the space devoted to a particular topic with all of the other topics, avoiding unbalanced descriptions or overly lengthy articles. Hal Jespersen (talk) 18:06, 9 July 2013 (UTC)

I updated the article. See what you think. I looked through a number of my secondary sources and I will have to say that all of them considered Barlow's decision to be a bad one. Chuck Teague's online article seems to be an outlier. I hesitate to use it as a reference for the article because it had no citations. Hal Jespersen (talk) 19:26, 9 July 2013 (UTC)

I'll take a look the next few days in my sources. While I enjoyed reading Gettysburg: The First Day, there is some contempt for the work in the academic world, as Pfanz appears to not be able to cite any valid sources, other than his own judgement. I'd clean up the content, but I'm not well at the moment, and recently received the gift of a broken toe from a co-worker. My mind has been clouded the past few days. Give me a bit of time to find at least one citation and clean up the article. Thank you for the solidarity. William R Wade (talk) 04:21, 10 July 2013 (UTC)

Update: You put a fair number of citations in your changes to the article, Hal, and honestly, I don't think that I'm going to find too many (if any) literary sources that will agree with either Teague's conclusion, or mine. Although, I'm sure that I can find a number of open-minded individuals in academia. With the recent expansion of Gettysburg College's curriculum on the subject, perhaps we will see a brave soul reach forth and plant into the equation a meaningful study of Blocher's Knoll. Pfanz is a well-known historian, and given his various positions over the years, few are going to argue with him about how he proposes the events of the 1 July 1863 occurred. As Mel Brooks once noted, "It's good to be the King." When one is King, nobody dares argue, regardless of how narrow-minded one's opinion may be. I will attempt to clean up the article when I'm clear-minded and level-headed, however, I don't purpose that we posit any more than we have, until the academic world stops accepting as fact, the "self-evident truths" that they learned from their predecessors, who perpetrated the same. Kudos for expanding the article to include that missing information, which is honestly crucial to the purpose of Wikipedia -- to expand one's mind. William R Wade (talk) 05:06, 10 July 2013 (UTC)

It seems to me that there are three ways that this decision could be portrayed: (1) it was a stupid, reckless move that ended in disaster; (2) it was a poor decision, made with some understandable extenuating circumstances, that ended in disaster; (3) it was the right decision under the circumstances, and the deficient actions of others caused it to end in disaster. I believe the wording changes I have made moved it from (1) to (2). The secondary sources I have consulted lean more toward (1) than (2), but we are giving Barlow some benefit of the doubt. Hal Jespersen (talk) 15:08, 10 July 2013 (UTC)

Good Afternoon Hal,

I made changes to the section of the article, as I deemed necessary. See what you think.

William R Wade 17:08, 10 July 2013 (UTC)

Better, I suppose, however the method to my madness with placing the Schurz cite there was to contrast with the Pfanz cite, and show balance of opinion. Also, placing an S after an apostrophe in a word or name that ends in S is grammatically incorrect, which is why I corrected them. You should have messaged here to discuss your changes, however, as simply changing it without previous notice seems rude. William R Wade 01:05, 12 July 2013 (UTC)

Sorry to appear rude, but that is the way we do it in Wikipedia. We rarely discuss issues of punctuation or minor editing issues in talk pages before the fact. It is only when two editors are reverting each other that we clutter talk pages with discussion of such issues. (In my nine years of experience as a Wikipedia editor, I find that about 98% of the changes I make are accepted by others without comments, so it would be rather time-consuming and pointless to discuss all of them in advance.) As to grammatical correctness, read my little style guide paragraph about possessives. Hal Jespersen (talk) 15:00, 12 July 2013 (UTC)

1) "Sorry to appear rude, but that is the way we do it in Wikipedia."

That's the way "we" do it, or that's the way you do it?

We = our little community of ACW editors who have been active over the years. I cannot make generalized claims about all of Wikipedia.

2) "We rarely discuss issues of punctuation or minor editing issues in talk pages before the fact. It is only when two editors are reverting each other that we clutter talk pages with discussion of such issues."

I'm honestly not going to waste time reverting and re-reverting changes. Nobody cares but I, and perhaps a handful or other Wikipedia users who are peeved by abuse of metathesis in spelling, grammar, punctuation, et cetera. However, you did miss a re-revert to truncation one of my changes.

3) "(In my nine years of experience as a Wikipedia editor, I find that about 98% of the changes I make are accepted by others without comments, so it would be rather time-consuming and pointless to discuss all of them in advance.)"

And?... Was it your intention to bloviate about yourself? I'm missing the point, here. I'm supposed to follow the pack, because according to your calculations, 98% of people agree with your changes? What was your point, exactly? However, moving my entire reference is not a minor change, as it changes the perception of that reference in relation to the Pfanz reference. And that is why you should have discussed moving it with me, as I placed it there to begin with. The definition is: courtesy.

I thought my point was clear. The vast majority of relatively minor Wikipedia editing changes are made on a prospective basis, described briefly in the editing summary line, under the assumption that objectionable changes will be reverted or modified, and then a discussion can occur after the fact in the talk page, if it is required. Discussing changes before they are made is usually reserved for something the editor believes will be controversial. I merely cited my personal experience as a measure of validating this behavior.

4) "As to grammatical correctness, read my little style guide paragraph about..."

I simply don't care about the article. When an S at the end of a word or name sounds like Z, as in "Doles'" or "Rhodes'," you place an apostrophe. When it sounds like S, as in "Weiss's," you then place an extra S. That is the rule. Rules are made to be broken, however, your article doesn't mean that your breaking of the rules makes those rules null and void.

The "rules" of possessives in Wikipedia are described in WP:MOS#Possessives. My little style guide article, in which I describe my personal preferences for the implementation of those rules in ACW articles, further cites the Chicago Manual of Style, 16th ed., which is the premier style guide for formal/academic writing in the United States. So there are obviously multiple rules extant, and I am describing the one we use pretty consistently in the major ACW articles.

Your apology is accepted, however.

Thanks. Hal Jespersen (talk) 20:37, 13 July 2013 (UTC)

William R Wade 17:39, 12 July 2013 (UTC)

Meaning of: "Practical"

What did Lee mean with the term "practical"?

Normally when such a term is used in a command context the reciever of such an order knows what certain terms in a discret situation mean. Lee has been an instructor at West Point and Ewell graduated also from West Point even if he had no staff training he should have been able to interpret Lee's orders by their meaning with regard of his tactical situation and Lee's condition, stated in his order that Ewell must avoid a general engagement.

In plain language Lee's order reads: Occupy that hill, but be able to disengabe with the bulk of your force, if necessary. Disengage if you are forced to fight an supirior enemy force at an unfavorable position. ( Thats common knowlege since C. I. Caesar's: Gallic War some 50 BCE)

Any Prussian officer or British officer at Ewell's rank would have understood the instruction. --109.90.98.210 (talk) 23:00, 5 January 2014 (UTC)

Not sure of how to answer your question except to say that this page is for discussion of the article, not a discussion of the subject. The Gettysburg set of articles are loaded with reliable source material you could draw on to discover your answer. I encourage you to find your answer in the sources. BusterD (talk) 23:42, 5 January 2014 (UTC)

Agree. You can also check the article to see how many British or Prussian officers were available at Gettysburg to help Ewell interpret the order. (West Point instruction in the 19th century was much more focused on French military practices.) By the way, the word was "practicable." Hal Jespersen (talk) 18:48, 6 January 2014 (UTC)

Left Flank of the XI Corps

On the left flank of the XI Corps, the attack focused on Gen. Schimmelfennig's division. They were subjected to a deadly artillery crossfire from Rodes' and Early's batteries, and as they deployed they were attacked by Doles' infantry. Early's troops were able to employ a flanking attack and roll up the division from the right, and they fell back in confusion toward the town.

This depiction strikes me as a bit imprecise. Firstly, Schimmelfennig's division was the left flank of the XI Corps, so of course any attack on that corps's left flank focused on him. Secondly, Early's troops did not roll up Schimmelfennig's division from the right, but the whole XI Corps- as Pfanz puts it: "Early's division, with the help of Doles's brigade [...] had overwhelmed and smashed von Gilsa's, Ames's, and Krzyzanowski's brigades in succession." Note that Amsberg's brigade (to the left of Krzyzanowski) is not mentioned, as it in fact held its position until ordered back at around 4pm (cf Gottfried in "Brigades of Gettysburg")

I would suggest to change the text to The left flank of the XI Corps was held by Gen. Schimmelfennig's division. They were subjected to a deadly artillery crossfire from Rodes' and Early's batteries, and as they deployed they were attacked by Doles' infantry. Doles' and Early's troops were able to employ a flanking attack and roll up three brigade of the corps from the right, and they fell back in confusion toward the town. SEM (talk) 11:24, 18 August 2020 (UTC)