Talk:Raising the Flag at Fort Sumter

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

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Essay-like

I'm concerned that this page reads far more like an essay than a Wikipedia article. Lines such as This is from a newspaper headline, and "illumination" was meant literally. The world in 1865 was a darker (and quieter) place compared with today (2021), when indoor light usually was based on animal fat: dim candles or whale oil lamps do not read encyclopedically. A lot of the information seems only tangentially related, and a lot feels like original research such as talking about it being "forgotten". Eddie891 ^Talk _Work 14:13, 20 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

@Eddie891: - I've purged the lowest-hanging fruit, including the "The world in 1865 was a darker ..." editorializing and an entire off-topic section, although it's still really rough. I'll inclined to cut even more of the content as off-topic, such as what remains of the illuminations stuff, but will save that for another day.

The bit about Lee's surrender being generally considered the end of the war has been marked as dubious because of the outcome of Talk:American Civil War#RfC: When did the Civil War end? and related discussions. This needs rewritten from the top down using actual secondary sources, but I don't have the sources needed to fix this. Hog Farm _Talk 01:25, 21 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

@Hog Farm, thanks for taking a look. I think the problem might be that it really isn't covered in secondary sources (according, at least, to our article which is, admittedly, OR). Do you have any idea what books we might check? My university library likely holds them and I'd be happy to check them out. Eddie891 ^Talk _Work 02:12, 21 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

@Eddie891: - While I had expected coverage, quick skims through Google books, JSTOR, and Project MUSE has convinced me that there's not really anything for this. I'm honestly starting to think that the best case of action would be to redirect to Fort Sumter#Recovery of Fort Sumter. Stuff like this makes me think it's a valid search term, but I'm not convinced there's actually enough in-depth coverage to warrant a separate article. A merge is obviously out of the question due to content quality issues. Hog Farm _Talk 02:37, 21 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Hog Farm, Yeah, that's kinda what I was thinking. Would make an interesting research paper, I think, that could probably get someone published. Yet this is not the place for that. Eddie891 ^Talk _Work 03:01, 21 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]