I read it on the Internet

[War Horse]

It truly amazes me how much bad information is out there. I am constantly reading accounts that are simply ****. A wise member told me once to use a rule of 3 at minimum. That is find three different sources that confirm the account. I couldn't agree more. What are our children to believe. Many a school child is reading this stuff that is not only limited to the ACW. If it's **** here it is **** everywhere. So they have done what they thought was their homework and believe they know factual information and if not corrected go through life believing a farce. Before CWT I would have never realized just how bad it really is. Just a short time ago I made a comment that Ab Lincoln was the only sitting President of the United States to be under fire on an actual battlefield. I know I read that on the internet and had no reason to disbelieve it. Now I find out it's ****! Those commercials couldn't be more accurate. I read it on the Internet!!!

 

[Chattahooch33]

Was he not the only one to be under fire?

 

[FarawayFriend]

Was he not the only one to be under fire?

What about Eisenhower? I think he was, too.

Edit:
Sorry !!!!! Those who are able to read definitely have advantages.
You asked for sitting Presidents. Eisenhower became President after the war.
My apologies I should have kept my mouth shut or be better informed before posting! Will not happen again!

 

[War Horse]

Was he not the only one to be under fire?

Nope James Madison also was under fire and now FF thinks Ike may have been as well. Lol use caution my friends.

 

[FarawayFriend]

Sorry War Horse, I just paddled back and have edited my post.
Again my apologies!

 

[War Horse]

Sorry War Horse, I just paddled back and have edited my post.
Again my apologies!

No apologies needed.

 

[DanF]

I heard from a retired secret service agent that Hillary laid Bill out with a heavy ashtray while he was president. Does that count?

After all "love is a battlefield".

 

[MRB1863]

Hey! This is a great post - under fire! I'm glad you posted it. Can't wait to tell others what I read on the internet.
(Agree with verification of facts.)

 

[cash]

 

[Dan]

Just read a historical account this morning written by a so called journalist who apparently needed something to write to fulfill his obligation to a newspaper. This "journalist" had used a book written 79 years earlier as his source of information. On three occasions in the article the wrong data was assigned to the person being written about. I cannot understand when quoting from a book in front of him how he could still mess up the facts in the manner in which he managed to do. I kept thinking about some poor kid in the future who comes across the article and believes it to be factual. Fortunately there was a comments section at the end of the article where I suggested the writer go back for a second reading of the book he quoted from. Facts are elusive enough without the careless mishandling of them by those with a pen and a deadline to meet!

 

[James N.]

This is like FF's post - that is, before becoming President - but of course Washington and James Monroe were both under fire during the Revolution; Monroe was even wounded at the Battle of Trenton.

 

[CW Buff]

The most laughable example of this that I have ever found (and it happened to be pertinent to the Civil War) was horrendous, to say the least. Not only was it the worst smear of Lincoln I have ever seen, but the facts were ****, the composition was ****, the redundancy was ****, and I found at least one instance of plagiarism (taken word for word from Wikipedia, with no reference, and I'm sure it wasn't the only one, though perhaps it was, since little else in the article was factual).

BUT, this was actually a good thing. When I found it I was outraged. I began seeking better info on the internet. Among that better info was CWT. It is in fact the item that put me on the path to CWT.

The great thing about the internet is it give us access to a wealth of info. The bad part is it give access to a wealth of info. The difference is in how we use it, and teach the kids to use it (which one would hope the schools are also doing).

 

[alexjack]

I posted a link to Youtube in Share your Shares about a camera found on the WW2 Bulge battlefield with photos taken by a dead soldier only for John Winn to point out that it's nonsense.

 

[DaveBrt]

WH, as long as 3 different web sites do not count as 3 different sources. The quality of the source is way more important than the number of times a "fact" is repeated. In one particular case, I can show you six or eight reasonably current books that make the same basic statement --- but original documents (in the low hundreds) prove them all wrong.

 

[War Horse]

It's very frustrating when you think you've discovered some little historical tidbit only to find out it's false.

 

[FarawayFriend]

... and I remember painfully my post of a picture of Richard Garnett here. Although several sources stated it as a picture of Richard Garnett, it was a pic of Robert Garnett. I still don't know how I could have known that.

 

[Allie]

You gotta be careful even with original sources! I was looking at a slave schedule from the 1860 census and discovered 3 of my relatives' slaves were listed as runaways at the time of the census. That seemed interesting and I was getting ready to check newspapers for advertisements for them, etc. All were mulatto, which seemed to have a story behind it. Then I noticed that some latter-day moron had gone over the original census document with an ink pen putting a check beside each mulatto in the "runaway" column in handwriting not distinguishably different from that of the original recorder. Unless there was a massive conspiracy among the mulattos of Lauderdale county district 1 to all run away as a united group, which seems pretty unlikely given that there see no news stories on that. Always question your sources, whether they come from the internet or not!

 

[James B White]

It truly amazes me how much bad information is out there. I am constantly reading accounts that are simply ****. A wise member told me once to use a rule of 3 at minimum. That is find three different sources that confirm the account. I couldn't agree more.

I think that the three-sources rule is, in itself, a good example of bad information. It's the quality, not the number, of sources that matter. Some things could not realistically have as many as three sources yet generally have good evidence with just one. What did John Smith have for breakfast a particular morning? It'll be tough to find more than his diary or a letter, but if the matter is mundane, there's usually little reason to doubt the accuracy of that one source. And there are other things that have hundreds of sources and are still wrong. Imagine how many sources one could find for Washington chopping down that cherry tree. I'd rather have someone be able to explain why their two sources are credible, then have them spend time looking for a third.

 

[Lost Cause]

It's very frustrating when you think you've discovered some little historical tidbit only to find out it's false.

This seems to be the case whether it be word mouth, in a book, in a documentary, or the internet.

 

[Patrick H]

It's equally frustrating when you find many, MANY references on the internet and they all say exactly the same thing. There are all those different articles and authors and it is clear that they aren't merely parroting what they've read somewhere, but they are literally cutting and pasting it! Ironically, it was a bunch of search results like that which first brought me to this forum. I was looking for some information with attributed sources for the Missouri guerrilla scout, John Noland (a black man). I probably found six or more articles about him and they all said exactly the same thing...and I mean EXACTLY the same thing. After reading the third article, I knew I was reading "hearsay" (no one gave source material) and as I kept finding the same short quote again and again, I knew the authors were cutting and pasting. Yet, they all seemed to have accepted their cut and paste passage as good enough to post on the internet. If those authors all accepted the material as genuine and repeated it without question, what are we to think of material we find on the internet? All I wanted to know was the source of the material. There wasn't even a way to find out who wrote it first. Some internet info is good (you can at least run those down when sources are given) and some of it is just...well...not possible to verify. Very frustrating!

By the way, to illustrate my point, I'll paraphrase what I kept finding about John Noland a year ago: Freed former slave...then joined Quantrill because of "abuses" committed against his family by Kansas jayhawkers, etc. etc. etc. But no attribution for the source of this information ever offered. Another thing I kept finding about him: "Most of what we know about John Noland comes from John McCorckle." I probably came across that four or five times, too. Well, let me assure you that McCorckle only mentions Noland once in his memoir. The writers who assured me that most of what we know about Noland came from McCorckle clearly never read McCorckle. They were parroting!

My rant aside, some internet information is very useful and very easy to spot (sources and attributions, etc.) and some of it is tantalizingly worthless...