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Wikipedia:WikiProject Military history/Assessment/Joseph Desha

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The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Article promoted Nick-D (talk) 10:41, 10 September 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Joseph Desha

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Nominator(s): Acdixon (talk · contribs)


I recently gained access to a few new sources that allowed me to do a more complete expansion of this article. After serving in the Northwest Indian War, Desha was elected to Congress, where he was a War Hawk. He put his money where his mouth was and enlisted in the War of 1812, serving with William Henry Harrison at the Battle of the Thames. Afterward, he became maybe the worst governor Kentucky has ever had, bringing the state to the brink of financial collapse, ruining its chances of having a world-class university, and pardoning his son for murder, only to see him go to Texas and kill another man. Barring someone raising major issues here, the next stop for this article is FAC. Acdixon (talk · contribs) 13:43, 3 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Support Comments: I'm sorry it has taken so long to offer a review of this. I will do what I can, but I don't have any knowledge of the subject, so I apologise if my review isn't very in depth. Anyway, these are my comments:

  • I made a couple of minor tweaks. Please check that you are happy with those;
  • one of the external links reports as dead: [1]. Is it possible to adjust, or add a link to an archived version?
  • the duplicate link checker tool reports a few examples of potential overlink: Great Britain, William Henry Harrison, Major general, Henry Clay, War of 1812, James Monroe, Kentucky Senate, Kentucky House of Representatives, Speaker of the United States House of Representatives, Old Governor's Mansion (Frankfort, Kentucky);
  • inconsistent terminology: Native Americans (in lead) v. Indians (in Early life and career);
  • is this a proper noun "committee of the whole"? If so, it should be capitalised accordingly;
  • "He promised that, if the legislature would again autorize appointment" (is "autorize" a typo? I'm fairly sure it should be "authorize", but I wasn't sure if there was some term of art that was I was missing);
    • Nope, as cool of a word as "autorize" would be, it was just a typo! :) Acdixon (talk · contribs) 17:27, 28 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • "and the New Court met with only 3 justices during its..." ("3" --> "three" per WP:MOSNUM?);
  • really petty nitpick of the day: in the References you have three dots after "What if", but in the Bibliography you only have two;
  • in the References, not a requirement, but a suggestion only: convert the dates (2012-06-28) into an easier to read format e.g. "June 28, 2012" (this appears to be your format in the body of the article). AustralianRupert (talk) 12:43, 26 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Images: File:Joseph Desha by Katherine Helm.jpg needs a PD-1923 tag, which is the only tag which is actually required, although the others are not incorrect. Everything else fine, although the Henry Clay image should be replaced ideally, because details of its publication are so sketchy. Grandiose (me, talk, contribs) 11:00, 28 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Support - The article's coverage looks good and looks well-sourced to me. Lord Sjones23 (talk - contributions) 01:46, 8 September 2012 (UTC)[reply]

SupportComments - Again not an area of strength of knowledge for me, but the article is comprehensive and the sources look good. A very interesting fella. A few comments.

  • Just wondering about the rendering of Major general in the infobox. I know that is the name of the linked article, but it is generally rendered with initial capitals on both words where I come from. It would also probably be better to link to the Major general (United States) article rather than the generic one. Further, and this may explain your choice of link, major general as a rank was disestablished between 1802 and 1812 in the US Army, but maybe it was continued in the militia? Just thought I'd raise that.
    • I'm definitely out of my depth on this issue, since my bailiwick is politics, not military history, but here are my thoughts about this. Unless there is a US military convention that I'm not aware of – a very distinct possibility – I would consider military ranks to be common nouns and thus uncapitalized unless applied to a specific person (ex. a major general vs. Major General Desha). Because of that, I have left both words uncapitalized in the text, but in the infobox, the first word of all parameter values needs to be capitalized. As for the link, that was probably something I did years ago when I was a much less experienced Wikipedian and didn't realize there was a necessary disambiguation. I changed that, linking to the US-specific article. You give me too much credit by assuming I knew that the rank was phased out of the US Army by 1812. :) Acdixon (talk · contribs) 14:35, 8 September 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Suggest changing which had provided many protections to the Huguenots against religious persecution to which had largely protected the Huguenots from religious persecution or something similar.
  • Was Robert Desha his older or younger brother? Worth including for context IMO.
    • None of the sources I used mention whether he was older or younger, but I've included "younger" based on the birth dates given in their respective wiki articles. Surely no one will challenge that. Acdixon (talk · contribs) 14:35, 8 September 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Suggest changing to accept volunteers corps for military service to to accept volunteer units for military service? Just not sure about how the double plural reads.
    • The double plural was a typo, which I fixed, but I still changed corps to units on your suggestion. Acdixon (talk · contribs) 14:35, 8 September 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Was there a more specific contemporary US political philosophy that you could link to rather than big government? I thought there may have been a particular one at the time, but my US political history knowledge in this era is pretty rusty.
    • I don't know of a contemporary term, but I wasn't sure about using "big government" here either. I changed to "a larger federal government" and dumped the link. Acdixon (talk · contribs) 14:35, 8 September 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Suggest you state how many delegates there were in the Kentucky congressional delegation. I don't think that stating that Every member of the Kentucky delegation that voted for the bill... lost his congressional seat provides the necessary context.
    • Again, nothing in the sources used, but the wiki article for 14th United States Congress indicates that there were 12 members from Kentucky (10 representatives and 2 senators). Added, per that. Acdixon (talk · contribs) 14:35, 8 September 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Suggest changing the Kentucky Court of Appeals struck down of the laws as unconstitutional to the Kentucky Court of Appeals struck down most/all of the laws as unconstitutional.
    • The word I failed to include there was "one", but it was a big one, so I've given it a bit more context. Acdixon (talk · contribs) 14:35, 8 September 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Suggest changing Despite his vote against it, he had secretly favored and worked to pass the Compensation Act of 1816, they charged. to They charged that he had secretly favored and worked to pass the Compensation Act of 1816 despite his vote against it. or similar. Just a grammatical thing.
    • Yeah, on second look, that was a pretty wretched sentence before. Changed. Acdixon (talk · contribs) 14:35, 8 September 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • I question the need for the use of a couple of archaic terms whose meanings are not clear on the face of it in a modern context internal improvements and remove the judges by address. Suggest transportation infrastructure and impeachment.
    • Well, internal improvements is still used in most textbooks today when describing the concept from this period (or at least it was when I was in high school a decade and a half ago) and removal by address is different from impeachment because impeachment requires you to be charged with a crime. Removal by address just means 2/3 of the legislature decided to oust you for whatever reason, or for no reason at all. There really needs to be a wiki article on that, but there isn't. I have been known to pipe "removal by address" to impeachment in the past, but now I'm pretty sure that's wrong. Acdixon (talk · contribs) 14:35, 8 September 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • so Blair took the records Sneed's office by force from appears to be missing here.
  • Governor Desha's reputation was also tarnished because of a pardon issued to his son. It would probably help if you explicitly stated that the New Court-Old Court issue had tarnished his reputation. It doesn't necessarily follow at present.
    • What about changing "also" to "further", as I have done. Does that sufficiently imply that the Old Court-New Court business tarnished his reputation without explicitly saying it? To me, it just seems to break up the flow of the narrative to explicitly say it. Acdixon (talk · contribs) 14:35, 8 September 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • attracted well-qualified and well-respected faculty such as. My understanding is that faculty in this context means the body of staff, therefore I suggest the insertion of a between attracted and well-qualified, and change such as to including.
    • I work in higher education, and this is a lazy habit that I'm trying to break, but it's hard because most of my colleagues do it, too. We tend to use "faculty" where we mean "faculty members". (MS Word usually flags this for me, but obviously Wikipedia doesn't.) Your suggested correction is right, of course, but I've just substituted "faculty members" for "faculty", which I think is also correct. Acdixon (talk · contribs) 14:35, 8 September 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Another issue during Desha's tenure was Horace Holley's service as president of Transylvania University suggest it was a controversial issue, not just an issue.
  • However, the New England Unitarian was too liberal for the tastes of many in Kentucky suggest explaining it is Holley we are talking about here, along the lines of Holley's New England Unitarian beliefs were too liberal for the tastes of many in Kentucky or similar.
  • but later reports showed that the final margin favored Metcalfe this is unclear, was this the final result of the election, not just reports?
  • where his son, a physician suggest clarifying if it was one of his sons, or his surviving son or whatever is more accurate.
    • I don't think the source says which son. In fact, I'm not sure any of the sources give names for any of his children or go into detail about the ratio of sons to daughters. The fact that he had 13 kids makes me think it unlikely that it was his only surviving son, unless he had several daughters, so I'm just going with "one of his sons". Acdixon (talk · contribs) 14:35, 8 September 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • The state erected a monument in his honor over his grave suggest The state erected a monument over his grave in his honorjust a grammatical thing.
    • I think I'll just drop "in his honor" altogether. It really isn't necessary. Acdixon (talk · contribs) 14:35, 8 September 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • You don't need Old Court-New Court controversy in the See also section , as it is linked in a main article link.

Again, great work. Regards, Peacemaker67 (talk) 05:21, 8 September 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for a very thorough review. This will definitely save me some time at FAC later. Hope you'll watch for later MILHIST ACRs from me. As soon as this one closes, I suspect I'll be bringing John Adair (Desha's predecessor) here. Acdixon (talk · contribs) 14:35, 8 September 2012 (UTC)[reply]
No prob, it was a pleasure. Now supported, happy with all your responses. I look forward to seeing the Adair article. Peacemaker67 (talk) 22:07, 8 September 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Comments. As always, feel free to revert my copyediting. Please check the edit summaries. - Dank (push to talk)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page, such as the current discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
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