Talk:Philip Sheridan

message: What are your sources for "The shelling of cities like Vicksburg and Atlanta also involved the deaths of thousands of civilians"? Do you have any specific casualty figures? I have never heard claims that approach that magnitude. Also, the Valley and the March were destructive primarily to property and animals, not civilian lives. Hal Jespersen
*James M. McPherson's book, Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era, Ballantine Books, 1988,  (which won the 1988 Pulitzer Prize for History) puts the estimates for civilian deaths during the war at 50,000.  Other estimates have it in the hundreds of thousands. The mention of assaults like Atlanta, Richmond, and Vicksburg was intended to show that no consideration was given to civilian deaths during campaigns. As for the Winter Campaign, it was designed to deprive the tribes of their means to wage war, by burning their lodges, destroying their provisions, and killing their horses. Sheridan's memoirs are on line if you wish to read them. — XtraQ 17:37, 25 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Shelling?

message: The Albany birthplace listed here is the one that Gen. Sheridan gave in his autobiography, but in hindsight this is highly unlikely. This post provides a good background on the possibilities of his birthplace, as well as the circumstances behind why it was never established. And it comes from someone who (supposedly) owns the Sheridan family Bible.
http://genforum.genealogy.com/cgi-bin/pageload.cgi?bible::sheridan::1365.html
The person who made the post has apparently published a book on the General, but I have not read it yet. Paulcleveland 00:06, 26 November 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: If you read the article and footnotes, you will see that some historians believe he claimed US birth because he harbored presidential ambitions, which are not possible for those born abroad. Hal Jespersen 15:01, 29 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: If anyone is still watching this- it is pretty much standard belief amongst historians that he truly wasnt born in Albany, should something more than a footnote be put in? And should the infobox not say Albany? I say this as a contributor to alot of Albany-related articles, including Sheridan Hollow, Albany, New York the neighborhood in which he was born.Camelbinky (talk) 04:44, 30 May 2011 (UTC)

text: Well, in Wikipedia we do not deal in "pretty much standard belief" and try to use secondary source citations, which in this case conflict with each other. However, you make a good point that the footnote regarding his claimed birth place does not show up in the information box, so I have fixed that. Hal Jespersen (talk) 21:50, 31 May 2011 (UTC)
thread_title: Birthplace

message: While wasting my vacation time, I happened to reread this article and found it lacking any critical assessments of his Civil War career. It is quite hagiographic. I have started updating and adding citations, although this will be a relatively slow process. I don't intend to spend much time on his post-ACW career if anyone wants to jump in. Hal Jespersen 18:24, 8 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I have now created the stub Battle of Booneville Tom (North Shoreman) (talk) 15:30, 13 March 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Thanks for finding this discrepancy. I fixed the name of the new article to match our naming conventions. Hal Jespersen (talk) 16:47, 13 March 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  updating 

message: To the anonymous user who has been making dozens and dozens of edits today: you may wish to notice that there is a Preview button that can be used to examine your changes prior to committing them to the database and filling up the editing history with meaningless entries. Also, I hope you understand that I am not trying to give you a hard time about footnotes arbitrarily. This is an article that is fully footnoted, so if you add information into a paragraph and the footnotes for that paragraph do not support the added material, it is necessary to provide additional citations. Hal Jespersen 23:05, 23 March 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Edits of March 23 

message: The entries for the Civil War seem to be too skewed positively or negatively probably based upon whether Morris or Wittenberg is the source. For battle edits, I've consulted with more impartial sources - historians who wrote on the battle and have a better understanding of Sheridan's role in the battle as opposed to an author simply highlighting Sheridan.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by ShenandoahValley (talk • contribs) 22:40, 22 March 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Civil War Edits

message: For the Overland Campaign, I note some Gordon Rhea considers several of the battles noted as defeats as Union victories. Wittenberg's book is an argument for a reappraisal - of a General who was often lauded as never having lost a battle of always being aggressive, etc.. etc... Obviously that is not the case. However, we shouldn't throw the baby out with the bathwater. I plan to examine more balanced sources for conclusions on some of these battles.
: I will be interested to see what you come up with because I consider this section to be rather well-balanced, giving both positive and negative opinions of his performance. Wittenberg's overall views are plainly listed as contrary and are identified by his name. As to Gordon Rhea, here's a quote from his book on the Wilderness (pp. 433-34): "Thus far, Sheridan's horsemen had served as scouts and his guards for supply trains. They had failed miserably in the first function, permitting Lee's entire army to approach undetected. And in the second function, which required the cavalrymen to remain close to the army's wagons, they had kept Sheridan from concentrating his riders into the powerful striking force he envisioned." In his book on Spotsylvania Court House he said that Sheridan "failed badly" at Todd's Tavern (p. 36). On the incident in which he argued with Meade, "Sheridan was free to test his mettle against Jeb Stuart, but the Army of the Potomac was to pay dearly. It was losing its cavalry at a time when the mounted arm's reconnaissance was sorely needed." (p. 69.) He also as negative things to say about Sheridan's strategy on pp. 120-21.
: By the way, as you consider modifications to this section, please remember that this is a biography and not a detailed discussion of any one battle. The emphasis should be on what the person did and what historians say about it, not what other people did in the battle. For example, the recent edits about the Battle of Chickamauga went into a bit too much detail about non-Sheridan-related activities, although I did not feel like pruning the description too much. The place for the detailed description of a battle is in the article about the battle itself. Hal Jespersen (talk) 23:39, 28 March 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Well, I will have to say that I enjoy discussing these issues on the talk page first rather than arguing about edits after the fact. I did read your remarks about Rhea, but I guess I mistakenly inflated them into more general remarks than you intended. I would agree with your overall judgment about Grant and the cavalry, but in the case of Sheridan, he and a number of historians have mistakenly promoted this decision as a positive factor. And although Grant agreed to the idea, it was Sheridan who promoted it vigorously, so he deserves a significant share of the blame. I judged the discussion about Grant's selection of Sheridan in the Shenandoah Valley to be relevant to Sheridan's biography, once again because most histories generally do not say much about the subject. I looked at your edits on the Chickamauga section and they are exactly the kind I was suggesting. Thank you. Hal Jespersen (talk) 16:25, 29 March 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Civil War Edits

message: I found this section to be awkwardly named and inconsistent with other biographies in Wikipedia. The latter isn't important. The awkwardness is. The reverting editor pointed me to a dictionary reference which however, did not discuss its acceptability to the reading community. 
A slightly better title would be "Memorials." In memoriam sounds like the editor is personally creating memories of the deceased. Student7 (talk) 11:39, 3 May 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: An exhaustive list of street name (and high school) memorials across the US is of very limited encyclopedic interest. Adding 'likely' to the description places its value at zero. Hal Jespersen (talk) 15:54, 6 August 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: In memoriam

message: Apparently this quote might not be entirely accurate. 
https://books.google.fr/books?id=eEJPwa7wykgC&lpg=PA20&dq=Let%20them%20kill%2C%20skin%20and%20sell%20until%20the%20buffalo%20is%20exterminated&hl=fr&pg=PA20#v=onepage&q&f=false
I'm really just glancing at this article. I hope someone more experienced in this material will make the call.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 77.205.202.246 (talk) 20:31, 7 March 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  Let them kill, skin and sell until the buffalo is exterminated 

message: Substituted at 02:51, 30 April 2016 (UTC)
thread_title: Assessment comment

message: With regard to
Sheridan High School is located 8 km (5 miles) north of General Sheridan's home town of Somerset. The athletic team is nicknamed "The Generals".
Football? Basketball? Baseball? Badminton?
Should be "The athletic teams are nicknamed 'The Generals.'"  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 23.117.245.40 (talk) 17:54, 7 March 2019 (UTC)
thread_title:  Which team?