Talk:Capture of Columbia

A fact from this article was featured on Wikipedia's Main Page in the On this day section on February 17, 2012.

Military history: North America / United States / American Civil War

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Which year ?

Why does the "on this day" feature claim this happened in 1862? Eregli bob (talk) 00:32, 17 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Looks like the on this day feature has been fixed. Wild Wolf (talk) 14:41, 17 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

How much of the city burned?

In various places, I read "burned to the ground", "much of the city was burned" and "not much of it burned". Which is it? Online sources suggest one third.Mukogodo (talk) 16:25, 17 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Who burned Columbia?

Some contradictions in the report by James W. Loewen:

Most likely it started when the Confederates burned the cotton-bales.

Other fires started by Union troops caused only minimal damage.

But...

Most likely the Union's scorched earth policy was to blame.

Could we present a more reasoned argument? Valetude (talk) 17:07, 29 September 2014 (UTC)[reply]

On 18 February 2014‎ an anonymous user changed "the Confederates' scorched earth policy was to blame" to "the Union's scorched earth policy was to blame", reversing the meaning of the referenced text that had been in the article since 17 February 2012. I have corrected this. -- Pemilligan (talk) 00:45, 22 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]

"Not sorry it happened"

This line strikes me as something that was added to express a political position. It first appeared in the article on 17 February 2011, and was tagged for citation in 2012. It sat, untouched, until last night, when I removed it, at which time User:Pemilligan helpfully located a source and restored the content.

This would be the end of it, except that the source provided is a Sherman biography about which I can't find any information. Is this reputable? The biography was published in 2013, some two years after the offending line appeared in this article, and the cited line is almost identical. Since the user who originally added the line could not have been quoting a book that hadn't yet been written, I can't help wondering if the book was quoting this article and now we've got a circular reference.

I would be much more comfortable if a source could be located which identifies who quoted Sherman. At a minimum, somebody should check that biography's biblio. --Moralis (talk) 19:52, 20 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]

I've removed this line again, for the reason stated above. Rephrased: the source was written after this line appeared in this article, and yet it appears in the book almost verbatim. It really looks like the source provided was simply quoting this article. We need a source that predates 2012. --Moralis (talk) 17:18, 28 August 2019 (UTC)[reply]

How much burned

The introduction says that much of the city burned, but the very last sentence says not much of it burned. Those statements are contradictory, and all the sources are offline, so I cannot verify anything. —howcheng {chat} 23:33, 13 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I added a section on this and removed the contradiction. deisenbe (talk) 12:51, 12 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]