Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Independence Day during the American Civil War


 * 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. Jayjg (talk) 02:20, 20 October 2010 (UTC)

Independence Day during the American Civil War

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At best, this should be a couple of sentences in another article. At worst, its simply bollocks: sourced to a dead link and something without a meaningful description behind a pay wall. (The material behind a pay wall may be worthless for notability: contemporary coverage of Independence Day events during the war does not establish the topic as existing any more than similar coverage would lead to an Easter during the Spanish Flu pandemic article. SummerPhD (talk) 03:10, 12 October 2010 (UTC)
 * Delete per nom. With no publicly accessible sources provided, it's hard to ascertain whether this is even a topic worthy of encyclopedic coverage. --Metropolitan90 (talk) 05:08, 12 October 2010 (UTC)
 * Delete If there is cited information it could be added to the article on Independence Day itself. Borock (talk) 07:36, 12 October 2010 (UTC)
 * Merge to American Independence Day; clearly, there's good stuff here that should go in that article, but a separate article just doesn't seem necessary. The Easter/Spanish Flu is a bit of a strawman because both the holiday and the Civil War relate directly to the essence of the United States existing as a nation. However, whether something is behind a pay wall is not a reason to delete; see WP:PAYWALL. Kansan (talk) 14:06, 12 October 2010 (UTC)
 * Have any active editors seen the content of the linked sources? It would be helpful if someone could identify these sources with publication data so that the rest of us can find out whether it is worth trying to look them up by some other means (like going to the library and looking for the publication in print or microfilm). Right now I don't even know what publications the sources are from. --Metropolitan90 (talk) 15:16, 12 October 2010 (UTC)
 * I have not and TBH, it is somewhat of a borderline case of whether it would be worth pursuing. Perhaps what postdlf found could be a good enough starting point. Kansan (talk) 18:11, 12 October 2010 (UTC)


 * Delete, I think this article is a complete dead end. There really is only one statement of fact in the whole thing, and even that statement (about some "members" of the South holding a business meeting" or something on July 4) is too vague to really be informative or worth preserving.  And the "references" given are completely unhelpful to anyone trying to track down or verify information.  Better to start over, and the main Independence Day (United States) article can incorporate any information on its observance during the Civil War.  I found a promising source here, particularly under the notes section on p. 62, which directly addresses the topic and provides further sources.  postdlf (talk) 16:22, 12 October 2010 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of History-related deletion discussions.  -- • Gene93k (talk) 19:10, 12 October 2010 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Military-related deletion discussions.  -- • Gene93k (talk) 19:10, 12 October 2010 (UTC)
 * Delete: if there is anything worth salvaging, we wouldn't know, because we can't verify it. In the end, the intersection is just not notable enough for an article, and while we might be able to AGF on the paywall, we can't assume notability.  bahamut0013  words deeds 20:55, 12 October 2010 (UTC)
 * Comment. The book identified by Postdlf contains an entire chapter on how the Fourth of July was observed in Virginia during the Civil War. So it may well be possible to write a decent article about this topic, although it will probably not look much like the current version of this article. If anyone chooses to redo this article to bring it up to a decent level of quality, they should make sure to post here in this AfD so that the "delete" recommenders have a chance to change their minds, if they so choose. --Metropolitan90 (talk) 23:52, 12 October 2010 (UTC)
 * I'm normally not really willing to reconsider on notability issues (either you have it or you don't), but I think that if a good source was able to assert notability, I might reconsider this case.  bahamut0013  words deeds 14:50, 15 October 2010 (UTC)
 * For what it's worth, the recent (albeit short) The Fourth of July: and the founding of America (Peter Bolla, 2007), a history of the changing celebrations of the day, mentions very little about the Civil War, and that which is there is entirely focused on the North. Shimgray | talk | 18:34, 17 October 2010 (UTC)


 * Keep based on the information above, sources can be found to considerably expand this admittedly very weak article. That they are available is sufficient for a keep--they do not have to be in there already. I just point out the one of the key purposes of these discussions is to enable people to reconsider--that's why it is not a vote.    DGG ( talk ) 02:02, 18 October 2010 (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.