Talk:William Lambert (abolitionist)

Rational For Certain Sections:

Early Life Very little is known about Lambert's early years (age 20 and younger), almost nothing is known about childhood outside him coming under the wing of Abner Francis. Details on his parent's are almost nonexistent and since Lambert appears to traveling exclusively with Francis or by himself by age 15 it is possible that they had little role if any in early life for some reason or another (death, abandonment, intentional fostering with Francis, etc) Abolitionist Work Unsurprisingly the majority of written records pertaining to Lambert involve his somewhat notorious involvement in civil rights and abolitionism. However much of what is accredited to Lambert has little corroborating evidence from the other side (anti-abolitionist) or his contemporaries within the movement. In general his contribution and level of preeminence in the anti-slavery and civil rights movements can be inferred indirectly by his association with better known celebrity abolitionist such as John Brown and George DeBaptiste and the resources his personal wealth and political influence could be to those movements. Also his supposed founding of secret fraternal anti slavery society lends further credibility to the inference that he was vital logistician and political resource with most of his actions being behind the scenes and thus unrecorded. Illness and Death Due to the potential controversy of simply listing William Lambert's cause of death as suicide; extra care was taken to properly frame his death with as much context as historical records could allow. Most information on his death was available via obituaries published in newspapers days after his death or secondary sources pulling from the same clippings.

Will1460 (talk) 03:56, 7 December 2018 (UTC)

Feedback from Prof. Smith: Hi William,

This is a lengthy and thorough article, and I think you are well on your way to having a solid final assignment. I can tell that you put a great deal of work and time into researching Lambert. Here's what I'd like to see you do for the final version.

1) Rework the lead: I would mention that Lambert was African American in the very first sentence. This is important for an article on antislavery activism since black abolitionists often get ignored. I would also cut out the middle sentence on his birth and education. That's too specific to include in the lead and you end up repeating the same info in the "Early Life" section below. Finally, I would add in a brief sentence here about how he is best known for his role in the high profile Robert Cromwell fugitive slave case, a case that contributed to the passage of the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850. That's a really important point and I think you're burying the lede if you don't mention it in the lead to your article.

2) Be sure to proofread the article carefully. I can't really line edit the article, so I'm asking you to go through it carefully a few times to correct typos, add in missing commas, and cut out wordiness. I think that the article's length could be reduced by streamlining your sentences more.

3) I think you may have too much material on Lambert's death. I understand that you want to be careful in how you frame questions of suicide and illness, especially mental illness, to combat the stigma around these issues. That's a great impulse. At the same time, going into so much detail can seem like sensationalizing or overemphasizing his tragic cause of death, especially when his death isn't relevant to his historical legacy and notability. My concern is that someone might come along and think that you're putting too much weight on his death compared to his life accomplishments and wonder why you made that choice. Can you cut some of the detail out without losing your sensitive treatment of his death? — Preceding unsigned comment added by StaceySmithOSU (talk • contribs) 19:00, 7 December 2018 (UTC)

Hi William,

I really can see the time that you placed into your research and being very thorough with your topic. However, I would say that you need to focus on punctuation errors in your paper. The content was excellent and you were able to keep things as factual as possible, which I think is very important in a wikipedia article. It was only some very blaring punctuation errors that took away from my reading experience. Which is a very good job and an easy fix on your part! Borcherd (talk) 20:45, 8 December 2018 (UTC) Dane Borchers