Wikipedia:WikiProject Military history/Peer review/Basil W. Duke

Basil W. Duke

I am thinking of nominating this for GA, but I thought I'd give MILHIST an opportunity to look thru it for any problems.--King Bedford I ^{Seek his grace} 02:43, 13 August 2008 (UTC)

Kresock

Clean up

Did some work to the page, mostly trimming the intro, section naming to be more consisent with other ACW pages, and other format changes. I removed the redundant parts and put some of the details lower. Here are the things I noticed:

Early life

• "Both of his parents died in an early age." What age? Died at the same time or separately?

 Done--King Bedford I ^{Seek his grace} 00:28, 14 August 2008 (UTC)

• Attended the colleges in what years?

 Done--King Bedford I ^{Seek his grace} 00:28, 14 August 2008 (UTC)

• "...and there were already a multitude of lawyers in Lexington." doesn't sound right to me. Maybe something like "In 1858 he left for St. Louis, Missouri, to practice law with his older cousin (also named Basil Duke) due to an over-abundance of lawyers in Lexington." or such. But I do like the word multitude for some reason.

CW service

• "...after so many pro-Northern politicians were elected in St. Louis, he and four others created Minute Men, a pro-secession organization, with Duke quickly becoming the leader, despite being only 23 years old." entire sentence seems jumbled. What significance was his age? To whom?

• "...indicted for arson and treason." By Whom? Trial?

• "Duke would return to Missouri to help Confederate forces in Missouri, but would eventually return to Kentucky..." too many returns close to each other.

• "By October 1861, he would enlist in his brother-in-law's (Morgan's) command as a private, but would be elected as a Second Lieutenant." I know electing their officers was common in those days, but dates for both ranks would be nice, and "By" should be "In" or "On" if dated.

• "He was twice wounded." I would word this like " During bla bla battle he was wounded in the bla bla on such & such date." for each occurrence and lose that short sentence.

• "Duke was the principal trainer for mounted combat for Morgan's Raiders." Where did they train? Why was Duke chosen to train them?

• "He participated in Morgan's Raid. During this raid his troops would dub him "The Little Whalebone"." Too short, and what inspired the nick? Maybe "On such date Duke participated in Morgan's Raid into bla bla locations" or the like.

• "He was captured at..." Captured alone?

• "..leading troops which gave a chance for others to escape across the Ohio River with Adam "Stovepipe" Johnson, or further into the state of Ohio with Morgan." Should be broken into two sentences, with the second describing how his actions/capture led to the two possibilities.

• "Duke would remain in captivity until August 3, 1864, where he was exchanged." Should be "When he was exchanged" and dated. And this should come after the bit describing the Penitentiary senario.

• "...could have escaped from the Ohio State Penitentiary with Morgan and Thomas Hines, but felt that to do so would hurt the chances of the escapees, as Morgan was easily replaced in his cell by his brother, but no similar replacement was there for Duke." I don't understand this at all. Chances hurt how?

• "...assumed command of Morgan's forces on September 15, 1864, being promoted to brigadier general." Made a BG the same date? I would word it "assumed command of Morgan's forces on date and was promoted to BG on date if they are not the same.

• What was Duke's fate after parting with Davis? Captured elsewhere (and date)? Surrendered and/or paroled (and date)? Fate of his command?

Postbellum

• "Duke would move to Louisville, Kentucky, after the war, and would return to practicing law in 1868..." Should be "After the war Duke moved to Louisville, Kentucky, and in 1868 he would return to practicing law."

• What did he do from 1870 to 1875?

• "Duke died after having surgery in New York City." Died from what? What type of surgery?

Overall

• The citing. I was gonna start combining the cites from the same page(s) of the same source, but then noticed they all are placed together at the end of a paragraph. I'm familiar with in-line citing, but not with in-para citing. Shouldn't they follow the punctuation mark after the words they cite?

I dealt with much that was bothering me before doing this breakdown, and put the rest here. I have a source for most of the relevant ACW dates/assignments and can add them if you wish, after the cites are cleaned up a bit. Just let me know. Kresock (talk) 05:16, 13 August 2008 (UTC)

If you can add anything, feel free.--King Bedford I ^{Seek his grace} 06:19, 13 August 2008 (UTC)

Here's some facts and dates that could be included

• Duke was related to future Confederate general A. P. Hill (brother-in-law) and to future Union general John Buford (cousin-in-law).

• Ranks: First Lieutenant (CSA) Nov. 1861; Lt. Col. (CSA) Aug. 1862; Col. (CSA) 7 Dec. 1862; Brig. Gen. (CSA) 15 Sept. 1864.

• all of his commands during the ACW, including dates

• exact dates of woundings, exchange date, and parole date & location. (parole wasn't from a prison, but from the U.S. government at the end of the war)

• My source wasn't sure of his birth year, and lists both 1837 and 1837 as possibilities. Anyone come across this before?

• Four of his post-war writings and dates.

After any rewriting/adjusting I would be happy to add all of this where appropriate and cite it (using whatever ref system) and link the relevant military ranks to the American use of them at the time. Kresock (talk) 01:11, 14 August 2008 (UTC)

Guyinblack25

I hope you don't mind an outside review by a video game enthusiast. It looks like Kresock had a lot of good suggestions, I'll try not to repeat the same comments. Here's what stood out to me.

The lead

• This seem awfully short. I would try to expand it to at least two paragraphs. The lead should summarize the whole article, but right now it mainly focuses on his Civil War service. I would add in some content from his early life and postbellum.
• Incorrect verb tense:
  "...Duke would later wroIte a popular account..."

Early life and career

• Trimming redundancy:
  "Both of hHis parents died..."
• Same thing. Also did he attend them concurrently?
  "He attended both Georgetown College and Centre College..."
• I agree with Kresock, the sentence about his move to practice law is too long to decipher.

Civil War service

• MOS:IMAGES suggests that images be staggered. I would do that here by aligning the marker image to the left and moving it down from the top to above the third paragraph in this section.
• I noticed several instances of citations with some spaces between them; for example, "[5] [6] [7]". They should flush against each other; like "[5][6][7]".
• Agree with Kresock again on the "pro-Northern politicians" sentence. It's hard to interpret.
• I would wikilink "companies" to Company (military unit) for the militarily ignorant. "He formed five companies..."
• "Acquire arsenal" and "secure artillery" seem redundant to me, but the difference may not be clear to me or the layman. I would either trim or clarify.
  "He formed five companies, and sought to acquire the federal arsenal in St. Louis for the secessionist movement, securing artillery for secessionist forces."
• I assume "Brig. Gen. William J. Hardee" is "Brigadier General William J. Hardee". I would write this out for the layman.

• • Most editors for the ACW pages use User:Hlj/CWediting standards (also recommended & linked on the MILHIST project page), and here the abbreviation use is correct; but we don't wanna confuse so change it if you think it's best. Kresock (talk) 21:46, 13 August 2008 (UTC)

• I would use emdashes here instead of commas. The extra information breaks the flow in such a way the reader should know.
  "At Elizabethtown, Kentucky during Morgan's Christmas Raid of 1862,—by this time a full colonel,—he was..."
• I would trim the word "surely", unless it's directly taken from the sources. Even then it doesn't really add much:
  "...his men thought he was surely dead."
• These two sentence could be combined:
  "He participated in Morgan's Raid. D, during whichthis raid his troops would dub..."
• It seems like something is missing from this sentence as the meaning of him leading troops isn't apparent to me. Was he captured leading troops? "...on July 19, 1863, leading troops which gave a chance..."

Postbellum

• There were several sentences in this section that used "would". I would put these sentences in a simple past tense to simplify and trim them. See some examples:
  • "After the war, Duke would moved to Louisville, Kentucky, after the war, and in 1868 would returned to practicing law in 1868..."
  • "He would briefly served in the Kentucky General Assembly from 1869 to 1870, and then he resigned"
  • "Duke would also beserved as the Fifth Judicial District's commonwealth attorney from 1875 to 1880."
• The last paragraph is only two sentences long. I would expand it to balance it out with the others.

Personal

• This section seems too small to stand on its own. I would remove the heading and move the content to the lead.

• • I added this section when I went through the page initially, before writing my summary here. It was in an even worse location then, but didn't want to gas it completely as it was the only part describing the man directly. Kresock (talk) 21:46, 13 August 2008 (UTC)

Hope this helps some. It was a good read and looks close to GA quality. Keep up the good work. (Guyinblack25 ^talk 16:09, 13 August 2008 (UTC))

David Fuchs

It looks like most of my comments were taken by Guy and Kresock, but I'll give it a good review tomorrow (this is so I don't forget.) One point is that usually the notes are put before references when done in a split format (see Chicxulub Crater, for instance.) Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs ^(talk) 00:04, 14 August 2008 (UTC)

• Due to changes is WP:MOSNUM which befuddle even me, complete dates are generally not to be wikilinked unless of some importance- I'll leave you to figure out what that means, but just make sure date linking is consistent throughout (you have one full date wikilinked and a few paragraphs later have it plain.)
• Generally, you want to leave out precise sizes (300px, et al) for images so that the thumb parameter changes based on local user settings.
• In case it hasn't been stated above, the lead should be expanded to two paragraphs and detail more of his post-Civil war career. Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs ^(talk) 15:02, 25 August 2008 (UTC)