A fact from Hampton Roads Conference appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page in the Did you know column on 10 July 2013 (check views). The text of the entry was as follows:
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RJensen: I looked at the reference provided ( this). According to that book, in a letter written by Hugh A. Montgomery, Montgomery thought that the Confederacy might get away with peace if they agreed to abolish future slavery, but would hopefully be allowed to keep the current crop of slaves 50-70 years. The only thing I can find on Mr. Montgomery is this page, which seems to indicate that he was just a random CSA officer. It's nice that a random CSA officer was willing to give up slavery... in fifty years... but that says absolutely nothing about what the actual delegates to the conference, the ones with power in the CSA, thought. SnowFire (talk) 07:26, 26 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Also, more generally. The focus of the movie Lincoln was the adoption of the 13th Amendment, so of course the principles of dramatic brevity mean that they're only going to show the part of the Conference that references the 13th Amendment. It doesn't mean the movie is trying to claim that this is the only topic that came up, any more than someone watching "John Adams" the miniseries would think that Adams was speaking 70% of the time in the real Congress because that's how often the Congressional scenes show him speaking. SnowFire (talk) 07:33, 26 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]
my point is the movie gets Lincoln wrong. David Donald says: "Lincoln did not now insist upon the end of slavery as a precondition for peace....He told Representative Singleton ...that he did not mean to make the abolition of slavery a condition" of peace."David Herbert Donald (1996). Lincoln. Simon and Schuster. p. 559. Rjensen (talk) 08:57, 26 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]
That is a much better reference! ....and one that indicates that the current text you added is quite misleading at best. First off, the book notes Lincoln's strong demands earlier for emancipation as a precondition to peace, and notes that the claims that Lincoln didn't insist on abolition of slavery might just be fabrications. The book then goes on to have the historian speculate that if he DID do this, it was because "slavery was already dead" and he wanted to raise the hopes of the CSA peace camp to spread dissension, if necessary through a campaign of misinformation. The text you've added implies that historical Lincoln really was willing to allow slavery to continue, which is not the Lincoln portrayed in Donald's book.
Also, "The film does not mention" is a recipe for trouble unless explicitly cited to a reliable secondary source. There are lots of things the film doesn't mention because it compresses a one-day event into 3 minutes. This is a gotcha phrasing that can be inflicted on anything ("Politician X did not condemn terrorist Act Y, so obviously he is in favor of terrorism" etc.). SnowFire (talk) 16:40, 26 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]
