Talk:Henry Cornelius Burnett

source problem

There were 5 footnotes using "Congressional Biography", but there's nothing listed below.--Jarodalien (talk) 15:12, 14 December 2014 (UTC)

It was meant to reference the entry from the Biographical Directory of the United States Congress. Fixed to be more clear. Actually surprised it got through FAC with that in place. Acdixon ^{(talk · contribs)} 14:34, 15 December 2014 (UTC)

User:Acdixon, thanks for the follow up, here's another one: what's the "Brown, p. 85" stand for? And there's 6 footnotes using "Harrison ...", and I can't be sure which one is which source below, can you help me out? I'm translating this article to Chinese.--Jarodalien (talk) 16:17, 15 December 2014 (UTC)

Brown is the second bullet in the Bibliography. He is the editor, not the author, so the cite template makes it look a little weird. I missed it the first time I started looking, too. I fixed the Harrison footnotes and deleted a duplicate ref in the Bibliography. Not sure how that got there.

Thanks for the translation work. That's a cool thing. I know a little Spanish, but not enough to do article translation. I hope speakers of Chinese enjoy learning about Burnett. Acdixon ^{(talk · contribs)} 19:00, 15 December 2014 (UTC)

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Edit reversion

I appreciate the work that ACDIXON has done on Kentucky articles, and that this article was featured in 2009--but not this morning's complete reversion of my Saturday edits, supposedly because they are tangential. I understand such complete reversion is easy, but consider it disrespectful, especially since it appears done in a way in which I wasn't notified (I had checked my contributions because I had forgotten Saturday to thank a correction another editor made midweek after a similar reversion of an edit on President Johnson). FYI, I've both added and corrected articles about both Confederate and Unionist, Republican, Democrat and Whig lawyer/politicians, and this is the third wholesale reversion that appears to be the result of my adding accurate and heretofore missing info about their exact slaveholdings. While I could only consult online sources, and the pre-existing footnotes include many that are not online, IMHO the organizational change I made to distinguish his early life from career, as well as additions that I made concerning his parents' lifespans, slaveholding and distinguishing the two counties in which he lived and practiced were important, particularly for non-Kentuckians like myself trying to understand his reasons for becoming a secessionist (and getting expelled and Confederate officeholding, which remains the article's focus). The restored "Early life and political career" section which I revised seems akin to the skeletal congressional bio of many politicians I've encountered, although the cited source is the Kentucky encyclopedia, which I cannot access. The University of Virginia alumni records are online, and his son (not he) is the graduate. Jweaver28 (talk) 18:09, 30 July 2018 (UTC)

@Jweaver28: You are partly correct in your assertion. My complete reversion was the function of a lack of time on my part and discarded some useful edits with some that I would contend are less necessary. Although my actions are consistent with policy (WP:BRD), I apologize for using a chainsaw where a scalpel would have been more appropriate. As for notification, I'm not sure what you wanted, but you typically won't get such on Wikipedia absent the automatic notification when your edits are reverted and/or seeing the changes via your watchlist if you have added the article to that. If you are expecting someone to drop a note on your talk page before reverting you, you will be disappointed more often than not.

As to the issues with your edits, the slave holdings information is based on WP:PRIMARY sourcing (census data), which isn't verboten on Wikipedia, but should be used with care. In this case, the number of slaves held by Burnett or his family doesn't seem especially important to understanding the man. Perhaps the fact that he was a slaveholder is worthy of mention, but given that none of the sources used to compile this article felt the need to comment upon his slave-holding in much, if any, detail suggests that it may be WP:UNDUE to include such information based entirely on primary sourcing. Also, adding vital dates inline for folks connected with the subject, while not unheard of on Wikipedia, is certainly not common, and my preference is not to.

As for the stuff worth keeping, the name discrepancy from Appleton's Encyclopedia probably merits a footnote, as you had it. The part about the gravestone, probably not as much, since it doesn't directly contradict either source and is, in any case, primary sourcing that is difficult for most editors to verify absent a photo of the stone. The correction to Burnett's alma mater in the infobox should certainly be reinstated. It had been some time since I looked at this article, and I didn't realize that this was an unsourced addition after the article achieved featured status. The in-line parenthetical about the son who attended UVA seems out of place, but given that there could be – and perhaps already has been – confusion between father and son on that issue, a footnote could be in order. On both of these issues, I reiterate my apology for a hasty, over-broad reversion. I hope we can work together to incorporate some of the information you have found and make this a better article. BTW, if you are interested, the contents of The Kentucky Encyclopedia – which is excellent – are hosted for free online by Morehead State University here. Acdixon ^{(talk · contribs)} 13:43, 31 July 2018 (UTC)

Apology accepted. Thanks for the clarification and the Kentucky Encyclopedia online link. I too hope we can work together. FYI, although it might be in the triangle to which you referred, for years I've been curious why a Maryland/DC/Ohio Episcopal minister Ethan Allen (priest) chose to sell his manuscript collection and spend his final years in Newport, Kentucky after the Civil War, though I haven't yet managed to find the time to take that route on a day when I can actually question the local librarian and/or current rector.

I might try to revise that section again (more carefully) later today or later this week when I go to the local library because of a week-plus of internet problems at home which might be the result of possible hacking. I had actually hoped to organize the articles I contributed on my talk page, but clearly circumstances intervened. On Sunday I learned that an Anglican/Episcopal blog I had contributed to for five years just vanished within the last month or so, and today I received supposed notice that my apple account was hacked--although the metadata indicates a suspicious address, my iphone switched navigation routes from a nontoll to a tollway midafternoon yesterday and refused to give any nontoll alternatives (that my android phone quickly found), so I'm on my way to the apple store. For what its worth, Wikipedia gave me a notice May 3 that someone tried to hack my account, and I often receive no-message phone calls from suspicious numbers shortly after editing wikipedia. Both once seemed mere annoyances, but more serious now.

Anyhow, I do think the number of slaves owned by 19th century politicians is relevant, both because it indicates the owner's relative wealth, as well as his or his family's personal financial stake in the war, which some call the "rich man's war and poor man's fight." Because the census information is so easily available online at libraries, as well as accurate (despite common misindexing problems because of handwriting), I'm comfortable using it pursuant to the wikipedia guidelines. I realized after your note that I could/should have put some of the info about his father onto this talk page. The southeastern Kentucky man of the same name was wealthy, and I'm cynical enough to know that many doctors nearly specialized in restoring slave held for trading purposes. Some Lynchburg,VA slavetraders also preferred to call themselves merchants, even though their profits were from humans being trafficked mostly into Kentucky or Tennessee. IMHO there's a real difference between someone owning a few household slaves and operating a plantation with dozens, as did Kentucky's Crittenden (Even more so with Jefferson Davis' brother in Louisiana). I've also noticed that books published in the tumultuous 1950s and 1960s tend to downplay slaveowning and up-play states right, which I consider as much a result of the racial tumult of that era as legitimate historical choices.Jweaver28 (talk) 17:19, 31 July 2018 (UTC)

I added an abbreviated version of last week's edit and don't know when I can get back to it, since the real estate investor/hacker bullies who threatened to shut me up online five years ago unless I sold them some property, seem to have become active again. In any event, the "early life and career" section does seem taken from the Kentucky encyclopedia, which doesn't answer the questions I had when looking at it briefly--and the search proved more difficult than expected since I don't have my preferred Virginia sources at hand. Simply put, it seems odd that a stripling succeeded to the seat of the speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives. If Linn Boyd had moved out of district in 1852, it seems odd that the seat would be up for grabs in 1854, not 2 years earlier. It would be even odder if Henry Burnett ran against Linn Boyd and won. Congressional districts being somewhat large, he would've had to have had a powerful backer. That could be someone he read law with, which might be in a local bar association eulogy, but which isn't online.

Also, the pattern of this Burnett's slaveholding seemed odd because normally for small slaveholders, the same sex but aged 10 years more appears in the next census. That didn't happen at all here. Since Burnett would die of cholera shortly after the Civil War, it's conceivable the area's sanitation was terrible, or since of all his slaves, only one of those he owned in either census was old (a 75 year old in 1860 leased to a farmer), he could have a relative who traded slaves. Of course I hope Burnett didn't kill or maim the missing 1850 slaves, but did notice his reputation as a bully. In any event, I couldn't quickly find out who his wife's father was. I could find his father, Isaac Burnett, but couldn't learn if he had brothers based on the 1840 census's check system. FYI, Isaac Burnett seems misindexed in both the 1850 and 1860 censuses, though he died in 1865. The "Isaac Burnett" name appears twice, in the 1850 Kentucky state census (not online) for Trigg County and the 1850 federal census for Wayne County (which while still in Kentucky, is considerably east). I also couldn't quickly find Isaac Burnet's parents back in Virginia, though Ann Burnett of about the same age and probably his sister owned about a dozen slaves in Essex County, Virginia in 1860 I believe (I'm writing in a cafe, not a library). Perhaps someone has written about the family in a local genealogical publication, but I don't have access to it today nor in the near future.Jweaver28 (talk) 13:59, 1 August 2018 (UTC)

I'm back in the library because I forgot to force an update check this morning and updates may have been released last night (though this laptop hasn't been found virus-infected by malwarebytes or other AV programs it tends to stop updating its AV shortly after the monthly windows anti-malware release and check, and in fact the last installed update was on July 28). Anyhow, I had forgotten to mention that in that era in Virginia, the distant predecessor of the Byrd Organization of the 1930s to 1960s drew its name from Essex County, Virginia, from which this Burnett's father had emigrated to Kentucky. Actually, its leader was Virginia Supreme Court justice Spencer Roane, and another important member was a Richmond newspaper editor. In fact, R.M.T. Hunter, who was the U.S. House Speaker before Linn Boyd, was from Essex County, Virginia,and would be expelled from the U.S. Senate around the same time as this Congressman Burnett. In Virginia of that era, the most likely way for an inexperienced politician to become a U.S. Congressman or other high public official was descent from the First Families of Virginia. Burnett wasn't one of them. The next way was descent from a Revolutionary War officer, as was the case for Spencer Roane. Nouveau riche wealth (to fund a political ascent by some family member) could come from industry (I don't know if Tripp County had salines or mines) or slave trading, not ordinary merchants.Jweaver28 (talk) 17:15, 1 August 2018 (UTC)