Talk:Porter Hanks

Court-Martial

Bigturtle, your recent edit did not solve the problem that I mentioned in my earlier summary as to whether or not Hanks was actually court-martialed. There is no reference of any such event taking place in the article. If we say that he knew he would be court-martialed, we would have to relate the process of the court-martial. If he was never court-martialed, "might" would be a better word to use, because one cannot know something if it turns out to be untrue. We would then also have to explain in the article that he was not court-martialed. Display name 99 (talk) 17:57, 15 January 2017 (UTC)

Display name 99: Hello.

(a) Records show that, as you correctly point out, Lt. Hanks was never actually court-martialed;

(b) the court-martial procedure described in this article was a hypothetical event which, at the time of Hanks's death, was about to become reality;

(c) surviving records indicate that preparations for the court-martial tribunal were well under way when Hanks was killed;

(d) the likelihood that Lt. Hanks would be court-martialed for his surrender, being a highly probable hypothetical event, may reasonably be included or not included in an article of this type;

(e) this author believes that Lt. Hanks deserves to be remembered for his moral courage in surrendering his fort and possibly saving the lives of some or all of his men under circumstances which he would have known would deeply shadow his future honor and reputation in the Army, because at the time of his surrender he thought he had a future; but

(f) if there is no way to get that point across, so be it. Best wishes. Bigturtle (talk) 19:48, 15 January 2017 (UTC)

Bigturtle, thank you for your response. I have expanded upon the subject somewhat in the article. Display name 99 (talk) 19:59, 15 January 2017 (UTC)

These look like good changes. As a picker of nits, however, this author points out that based on the table of organization of the U.S. Army during the War of 1812 it is customary to identify U.S. brigadier generals simply as "Generals." The only general who was a major general was Maj. Gen. Henry Dearborn, and Wikipedia says he got his second star from the governor of Massachusetts, not the U.S. commander-in-chief. Bigturtle (talk) 20:52, 15 January 2017 (UTC)

Okay. I changed that part back. Thanks for your help. Display name 99 (talk) 20:59, 15 January 2017 (UTC)