Talk:George Gordon (Civil War general)

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It seemed POV to place his most infamous attribute after his name in the title of the article. It would be like having an article called "Benedict Arnold (Traitor)" or "Henry Ford (Anti-semite)" or even "Pope Benedict XVI (Hitler Youth)." A person's evil deeds and bad associations are not generally placed in the title of the article. They should properely be in the text, with verifiable sources. They can also be noted through links to the attributes. The only question is what exact title to use, to disambiguate him from all the other George Gordons, such as the British general and the Scottish Lords.

To see the relative importance the rest of the world places on Gordon's association with the KKK versus his role as a Civil War general, I Googled

"George W. Gordon" general -Wikipedia 

and got 132 hits, most of them pointing to the individual who is the subject of the article, while a Googling of

"George W. Gordon" "Ku Klux Klan" -Wikipedia

only produced 9 hits.

This is following the practice of the article on Nathan Bedford Forrest, who was the titular head of the organization for several years, whose article does not have the Ku Klux Klan association in the title, but instead the connection is noted in the body of the article. Edison 18:13, 22 June 2006 (UTC)

Fair use rationale for Image:George Washington Gordon.jpg

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BetacommandBot 05:13, 5 August 2007 (UTC)

Youngest Brigadier General

[1] says Gordon was "the youngest Brigadier General in the Confederate Army by the end of the war. " This statement was removed from the article with the claim that there were many younger. Of course we should look at the reliability of the sources, and make sure that this one is not just a case of a lazy author mirroring Wikipedia. But I also see [2] which states the same claim. Gordon was promoted to Brigadier General August 15, 1864, at which time he was 27 years old. References, please, for all the younger Confederate Brigadier Generals? Edison (talk) 02:03, 23 June 2009 (UTC)

I wasn't involved in writing the article or in the original reversion, but this is an interesting research task. In order to claim that someone was not the youngest, you do not need to show 25 were younger, only that one was. Scanning through my list of generals, James Phillips Simms was a Confederate brigadier general at the end of the war (promoted December 8, 1864) and he was born on January 16, 1837. I stopped scanning there because one ought to be sufficient. Hal Jespersen (talk) 14:22, 23 June 2009 (UTC)

So for Gordon we have Aug 15, 1864 minus October 5, 1836 = 27 years, 10 months, 11 days including the end date. For Simms we have Dec 8 1864 minus Jan 16 1837 = 27 years, 10 months, 23 days including the end date. This makes Simms 12 days older than Gordon on his date of promotion. Please check the calc and try again. Did I enter the birth and promotion dates correctly? Edison (talk) 19:40, 23 June

Granted, Simms (born later) if he remained a live General at war's end (no sure thing) would have been younger than Gordon at war's end. For now I've changed the text to "one of the youngest." Edison (talk) 20:01, 23 June 2009 (UTC)

I just reread the original claim and it said "rising to be the youngest brigadier general in the Confederacy by the last year of the war" so I guess it's ambiguous. There may in fact be a brief period in the last year (April 64 - April 65) in which he was the youngest, although I don't think that's a very interesting fact, even if true. I had interpreted it originally as "at the end of the war" and that is demonstrably false. On April 9, 1865, at least one BG was younger than he was. (There were a number of younger BGs, but they usually died before the end.) Hal Jespersen (talk) 00:46, 24 June 2009 (UTC)

Was Simms a living general at war's end, for sure? Edison (talk) 06:22, 26 June 2009 (UTC)

Simms died in 1887. Remember, I said that I simply stopped on the first match. There could be others as well. Hal Jespersen (talk) 14:58, 26 June 2009 (UTC)