Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Alexander Hamilton and slavery


 * The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review).  No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was delete and redirect to Alexander Hamilton. I believe there is enough consensus that the content is unreliable that it warrants deletion before redirection, although I am willing to provide copies to anyone who wishes to evaluate it for themselves and possibly incorporate anything that can be salvaged into the main article. &spades;PMC&spades; (talk) 01:42, 19 July 2018 (UTC)

Alexander Hamilton and slavery

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This WP:POVFORK article relies so heavily on unreliable sources that it is worthy of deletion.


 * Michelle DuRoss is the most heavily cited and quoted single source for this page. She is identified here as a history professor and as a historian. Her publication is cited 29 times as footnote 9, and 7 more times as footnote 23.


 * DuRoss's list of publications on Google Scholar is a total of two, the other one being her dissertation. As it turns out, DuRoss seems to have been either a Ph.D. student at SUNY Albany, or a very recent Ph.D. graduate, when the cited article was written. She was definitely not a professor when it was written.


 * If we look at the journal that published her article, Early America Review, we find that it wasn't exactly a peer-reviewed scholarly publication, per WP:SCHOLARSHIP. It was an Internet journal (see From the Publisher). I saw no indication that this journal even had an editor; submissions were directed to the publisher (see submission guidelines), and it appeared to be a one-man operation.


 * Ishmael Reed is cited here for two articles, both extensively quoted here. The first article by Reed is cited 10 times (footnote 10), and the second is cited 4 times (footnote 14). In both of them, Reed in turn quotes and relies upon "Professor Michelle Duross, of the University at Albany, State University of New York", which he writes out in full both times, inflating her appearance of authority to bolster his own. The reliability of these two Reed references can be judged (per WP:NOTRELIABLE and WP:BIASED) by reading Wikipedia's article on CounterPunch, the magazine in which they were both published.


 * Allan McLane Hamilton, cited here 5 times (footnote 1), may be the original source of all allegations that Hamilton owned slaves, and is relied on by other cited references. He wrote a biography of his grandfather, whom he never knew personally. Dr. Hamilton was a psychiatrist and medical doctor, but it is misleading to identify him as a "historian" as this article does. Dr. Hamilton looked at his grandfather's business ledgers, and characterized several cryptic entries as evidence that Hamilton had purchased a slave for himself. It appears that unless Hamilton clearly identified that a particular purchase was done on behalf of a named legal client or family member (such as John Barker Church), his grandson simply assumed without proof that Hamilton was buying a slave for himself. (There are no citations to any of Hamilton's correspondence or writings that would indicate that he owned slaves, and no cited evidence of slaves in Hamilton's will or in lists of his assets.)


 * Original research or synthesis
 * Footnotes 37, 38, and 41 appear to be original research.
 * Primary sources are cited at footnotes 16, 21, 22, 26-28, 30, 39, and 40. The passages that rely on them may be impermissible synthesis, or may be missing the citation to their actual source.


 * Self-published sources
 * A self-published Tumblr post, http://alexanderhammyton.tumblr.com/post/144430999866/on-hamilton-and-slavery, is cited here 11 times (footnote 12).
 * A self-published book by Alan J. Clark (published using Author House) is cited as footnote 33.
 * A self-published blog post by Jack Stanley, http://edisoneffect.blogspot.com/2012/08/was-aaron-burr-really-as-bad-as-we-say.html, is cited as footnote 35.
 * A self-published Reddit comment by "silveredbow" is cited 7 times (footnote 36).

For at least those reasons, I propose deleting redirecting Alexander Hamilton and slavery to Alexander Hamilton. Lwarrenwiki (talk) 22:26, 11 July 2018 (UTC) revised 13:48, 12 July 2018 (UTC)

Lwarrenwiki (talk) 02:12, 12 July 2018 (UTC)
 * Delete There is no reason to have a seperate article on this subject.John Pack Lambert (talk) 02:28, 12 July 2018 (UTC)
 * Delete Lwarrenwiki makes a convincing case this article is based on fringe sources. Rjensen (talk) 03:24, 12 July 2018 (UTC)
 * Comment. DuRoss got her PhD sometime between 2000/11 https://www.albany.edu/history/57611.php.
 * Early American Review has apparently gone through a possible change in ownership since 2011 - their original appearance & present appearance are quite different (the present incarnation is prominently selling/pushing tutoring services). Their editorial oversight is somewhat opaque but I am not sure that DuRoss' article/thesis should be thrown out completely - it seems to at least be well-referenced.
 * Dr. DuRoss' present job status remains MIA to me - and believe me I did look. Shearonink (talk) 04:23, 12 July 2018 (UTC)
 * AHA directory shows 2011 PhD under another name:  Carrigan, Michelle  State Univ. of New York, Albany, Dept. of History Dissertation Title: "The Divorce of Isaac and Elizabeth Gouverneur: Sensibility and Law in the Revolutionary Era" Dissertation completed, 2011  Rjensen (talk) 05:14, 12 July 2018 (UTC)
 * Thanks for that info. Dr. Carrigan is presently an Assistant Professor of History & ​Discipline Leader - History in the Humanities Department of Indian River State College. Shearonink (talk) 06:44, 12 July 2018 (UTC)
 * OK, she's a legit history scholar. However the article in question does not pass the RS tests--an unknown journal and--much more decisive--no cites in the scholarly literature which on Hamilton is very large and esp keen on slavery topics. Rjensen (talk) 07:02, 12 July 2018 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of History-related deletion discussions. Coolabahapple (talk) 13:15, 12 July 2018 (UTC)


 * Delete Redirect . As the proposer, I've just updated my deletion request at the top, to change the suggested remedy to a redirect to Alexander Hamilton. Lwarrenwiki (talk) 13:48, 12 July 2018 (UTC)
 * Delete Bad sources all the way. Thomas DiLorenzo is not a historian but an Economics Professor who likes writing about history (for which he gets rather "interesting" reviews.
 * I vote to Keep. I wish also to employ instant-runoff voting on this matter: should the Keep votes not win the day, I wish for my vote to be converted to a Redirect vote.  allixpeeke (talk) 08:09, 14 July 2018 (UTC)
 * Redirect back to the main article. I suspect the interest in the subject is due to him being a recent theatrical subject.  Peterkingiron (talk) 16:43, 15 July 2018 (UTC)


 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.