Talk:Alexander Hamilton

Early Military Career needs updating

Full Disclosure: I am the author of the book and article mentioned below.

In light of recent research (see also Google Books), Hamilton's Early military career needs updating. (Other sections also need updating, but one thing at a time.) As this could be considered a "major edit," it contradicts previous biographies, and I am the author, I felt opening a discussion prior to editing the page made the most sense.

PS I'm a newbie at Wikipedia editing, so please excuse any ignorance or faux pas on my part. FoundingFatherFan (talk) 21:56, 24 July 2015 (UTC)

Welcome to Wikipedia's Alexander Hamilton page! yes please help out. However you can't cite your own new book. It's self-published and that's a major problem see wp:UGC . However, you can cite other scholars & the primary sources that you used. This is especially important if you are challenging published biographies (such as Chernow p 63) In general, Wikipedia strongly discourages the publication of new findings here. look at wp:RS Rjensen (talk) 23:01, 24 July 2015 (UTC)

@FoundingFatherFan: (edit conflict)The page you refer to says, "Self-published material may sometimes be acceptable when its author is an established expert whose work in the relevant field has been published by reliable third-party publications." Does that include public speeches about Hamilton, one of which was broadcast by CSPAN3 and another one to be broadcast shortly? How about reviews of the book by well-known Hamilton experts and biographers? Just as we cite Chernow rather than primary sources, largely because those documents are often not readily available to the public, it would be much more useful to cite my book rather than the lengthy citations (the citations and other supporting material regarding Hamilton's early military career take up more than two pages in the endnotes). Thank you Rjensen for the advice.FoundingFatherFan (talk) 23:16, 24 July 2015 (UTC)

Well no--broadcasts don't work well. see WP:RS becuae we have MANY published books. you need published reviews in the scholarly literature to demonstrate you're an expert, and even then it's dicey. Please do NOT try to use Wikipedia to publish new results that only you have validated. Rjensen (talk) 23:54, 24 July 2015 (UTC)

@FoundingFatherFan: (edit conflict) Thanks for announcing your conflict of interest. While you are welcome to improve Wikipedia, I would caution you about using your own book as a reference for same. I think WP:BRD is the best way for you to proceed. Be bold, if you get reverted you'll need to discuss the issue and determine consensus. Please be aware that consensus includes all of us dilettantes that don't study the subject to the degree you may have. You may find this frustrating. Chris Troutman (talk) 23:05, 24 July 2015 (UTC)

The previous two editors are completely correct, as I understand it, and have offered good advice. Shoreranger (talk) 18:10, 21 August 2015 (UTC)

On slavery section needs reframing

The section on Hamilton's views on slavery does a pretty good job of showing the complexity of his viewpoints and different interpretations of how he actually viewed slaver.

But... it reads way too much like an academic research paper rather than an encyclopedia entry. Each sentence doesn't need a preface of "[Researcher] notes" or something along those lines. Proper credit can go to the original researchers in the notes. I believe that this format is generally confusing for people unfamiliar with academia (who are a large portion of Wikipedia readers) and is just inconsistent with how Wikipedia usually looks. Blumenblatt (talk) 23:08, 6 October 2015 (UTC)

Probably true, but FWIW I've seen people criticised with GA and FA nominations in the past for not making the source of the opinion clear inline in the text. Ironholds (talk) 20:10, 13 December 2015 (UTC)

Grammar review

I overlooked a few mistakes as I was reading, although one sentence structure could influence meaning/interpretation. I don't know what was correct so did not edit. I'm only as far as the incorrect use of "wounded up" for "wound up" (" while William Duer, the governor of the program, wounded up in debtors' prison.[150][152] ")

I stopped there to ask for an editor to review this first half (with the minimum of three major errors). There may be more but I have lost confidence in the article and so will stop reading at this point. It is too bad as there is the highest level of interest in Hamilton right now because of the broadway musical. Perhaps even a more thorough and accessible overview/preview/summary of his accomplishments and defeats, at the start of the article, would be useful to many. Irishstones (talk) 23:20, 8 December 2015 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 26 December 2015

The Wikipedia article on Alexander Hamilton has the following statement referring to the Bank of the United States:

    "...create the government-owned Bank of the United States."

In actual fact the bank was not government-owned, and the bank ownership was as described in the Wikipedia article on the Bank of the United States:

 " Hamilton proposed establishing the initial funding for the First Bank of the United States through the sale of $10 million in stock of which the United States government would purchase the first $2 million in share.  The remaining $8 million of stock would be available to the public, both in the United States and overseas. The chief requirement of these non-government purchases was that one-quarter of the purchase price had to be paid in gold or silver; the remaining balance could be paid in bonds, acceptable scrip, etc."  [This financial requirement severely limited the ability of non-wealthy individuals to purchase shares.]

The incorrect statement in the present Alexander Hamilton article should be replaced by something like the correct statement from the Bank of the United States article. I would also suggest the bracketed statement as a clarification. However, I have no authority for that statement.

Gottliebpet (talk) 05:17, 26 December 2015 (UTC)

Resolved

I changed it to government backed, it's a bit better. Someone might be able to expand on it a bit, but for now it does match the sources better. Sir Joseph ^(talk) 04:28, 15 January 2016 (UTC)

"Single most important source" not supported by citation?

I'm not a heavily-involved editor and am certainly not knowledgeable in Constitutional interpretation - I initially noticed the bit because the tenses were off. But after looking into it, the citation doesn't seem to support the claim that the Federalist Papers are the single most important source for constitutional interpretation. I attempted to tone down the absolute claim, but was reverted, so just corrected the tense, and am addressing the citation issue here.

I don't doubt that they are very important and may be "most important", but I tracked down the linked citation via my local library and Academic OneFile, and it simply ranks the individual papers against themselves. I couldn't find any statement in the article about the Papers′ import as a whole, relative to anything else. The article on the Federalist Papers themselves has this to say, while citing the same source:

Federal judges, when interpreting the Constitution, frequently use The Federalist Papers as a contemporary account of the intentions of the framers and ratifiers.

Shouldn't the claim here either be similarly non-absolute, or have a citation that backs up the absolute claim? In the former case, the language before the current iteration was most recently introduced seems suitable: "still an important source", which is certainly true, without making any uncited absolute claims. In the latter case, perhaps the language could be tweaked to incorporate the citation used earlier in the Papers' wiki page:

According to historian Richard B. Morris, they are an "incomparable exposition of the Constitution, a classic in political science unsurpassed in both breadth and depth by the product of any later American writer."

— Preceding unsigned comment added by Spellcheck (talk • contribs) 22:18 28 December 2015

Here are the most cited sources of Supreme Court opinions 1953-1984: #1 = Federalist Papers N=102 decisions cite it; #2 Story's Commentary N=36 decisions; #3 Cooley N=21 decisions. from Pamela C. Corley, Robert M. Howard and David C. Nixon, "The Supreme Court and Opinion Content: The Use of the Federalist Papers" Political Research Quarterly Vol. 58, No. 2 (Jun., 2005), pp. 329-340 at p 330 in JSTOR. Wilson gets the same result with a longer time frame 1925-1984: Wilson, James G. "The Most Sacred Text: The Supreme Court's Use of the Federalist Papers." Brigham Young University Law Review 1985. 65-135. Rjensen (talk) 23:55, 28 December 2015 (UTC)

Why is this protected?

Unable to remove the "Hamilton" lyric that opens the entry.