Talk:National Union Party (United States)

Still the GOP
We should point out that National Union wasn't a new party. It was the Republican Party re-named. GoodDay (talk) 19:37, 11 January 2009 (UTC)

Was it just the republican party? Since it included a democrat vice-presidential running mate, wasn't it really a coalition?203.184.41.226 (talk) 05:08, 11 August 2012 (UTC)


 * This is historical white-washing at best. It wasn't a new name for the Republican Party. It was a completely new party formed by a coalition of democrats, republicans and independents. 173.216.125.207 (talk) 20:25, 24 November 2016 (UTC)
 * says who? please cite a RS (reliable secondary source) for the "completely new" idea. Rjensen (talk) 20:45, 24 November 2016 (UTC)


 * says actual newspapers that show the National Union party existing since well before 1864. For example, here is a news article from 1861
 * http://www.nytimes.com/1861/08/18/news/the-national-union-party-meeting-of-the-constitutional-union-state-convention.html
 * And one from 1860
 * https://newspaperarchive.com/seymour-times-aug-02-1860-p-1/?tag=national+union+party&rtserp=tags/?ndt=by&py=1860&pey=1865&pep=national-union-party/


 * It's not hard to find it, if you bother to search. It's only recently the Republicans have tried to whitewash this. 173.216.125.207 (talk) 19:11, 5 September 2017 (UTC)
 * Those two newspaper articles are talking about the Constitutional Union Party, not the NUP that nominated Lincoln and Andrew Jackson. --Ismail (talk) 12:18, 10 September 2017 (UTC)


 * They specifically say "National Union Party", not "Constitutional Union Party". So you are saying that the "National Union Party" mentioned in those articles became a different party - the Constitutional Union Party, and the Republicans, just a couple years later, split into 3 pieces, and one piece (the "true" republicans) renamed themselves the National Union Party? Anyone else that saw a party split and a small part rename itself would say that the new part with a new name (even though it is evident it was in use before 1864 as seen above) is a new party, not the old party.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 173.216.125.207 (talk) 02:05, 14 September 2017 (UTC)
 * The NYT article specifically refers to it as the "Constitutional Union State Convention." Back then the Constitutional Union Party was also referred to as the "National Union Party." F.A. Tallmadge (mentioned in the article) is likewise identified with the Constitutional Union in every source I can find, such as this one. --Ismail (talk) 16:01, 14 September 2017 (UTC)

Inconsistency with 1864 election articles
I just added some information about the number of total seats for the House and Senate in the 1864 elections, to give some context for the number of seats the party won. While doing this I noticed that that this article is inconsistent with our articles on the United States House of Representatives elections, 1864 and the United States Senate elections, 1864. This article says the National Union Party won 42 Senate seats, but the election article says "Republicans" won 39, "Unconditional Unionists" won 3, and "Unionists" won 1. Perhaps the combined Republicans and Unconditional Unionists equates to the National Union results, but that isn't clear from either article. The inconsistency for the House is worse. This article says 149 seats for National Union. The election article says 18 National Union, 136 Republicans. That doesn't add up at all. Unfortunately the results are not sourced in any of the three articles. I found a source that generally affirms the numbers in this article (although referring to the party as the Republicans instead of National Union) and added it, but the inconsistency still needs some resolution, preferably with high-quality sources. Placing this here and putting pointers on the other two talk pages because this article has the most edits and thus more likely to attract discussion. --RL0919 (talk) 20:08, 6 August 2011 (UTC)

What is meant by the statement that radical republicans thought Lincoln was "incompetent"? Does that simply mean lacking in competent, or is there some special meaning involved? Competence, or lack thereof, doesn't stop people being nominated for office!203.184.41.226 (talk) 05:10, 11 August 2012 (UTC)

File:Republican presidential ticket 1864b.jpg to appear as POTD
Hello! This is a note to let the editors of this article know that File:Republican presidential ticket 1864b.jpg will be appearing as picture of the day on February 3, 2013. You can view and edit the POTD blurb at Template:POTD/2013-02-03. If this article needs any attention or maintenance, it would be preferable if that could be done before its appearance on the Main Page. Thanks! — Crisco 1492 (talk) 22:39, 31 January 2013 (UTC)

Color code
Greetings fellow editors! I recently added colors to Lifespan timeline of Presidents of the United States and it looks like the official color for the National Union Party (taken from is a little too close to that of the Republican Party. The same issue is visible on List of Presidents of the United States. Would it be acceptable to change this color slightly, e.g. using the predefined "FireBrick" (#B22222) instead of the current "Crimson" (#DC143C)?

Comments welcome. — JFG talk 18:42, 28 October 2016 (UTC)
 * ✅ No feedback yet, so boldly done. — JFG talk 06:42, 13 November 2016 (UTC)

External links modified (February 2018)
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Electoral landslide
The term landslide election is subjective and it is more objective to describe the actual electoral results,

Furthermore, the phrase "electoral landslide" would seem to be a deliberate reference to Preince Reibus's description of Trump's electoral victory and suggests that Lincoln / McClellan lost the popular vote, which they did not.

https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2016/nov/21/reince-priebus/despite-losing-popular-vote-donald-trump-won-elect/

Source for 1864 electoral vote results:

https://uselectionatlas.org/RESULTS/national.php?year=1864

Please stop inserting Trump propaganda into wikipedia entries about Abraham Lincoln, Rjensen. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2600:8807:C24E:2000:1AD:CFF6:165A:F822 (talk) 18:27, 26 January 2022 (UTC)


 * One editor has a problem with calling the result an "electoral landslide." at 17:35, 25 January 2022‎ 2600:8807:c24e:2000:2c69:ef99:80eb:f694 Removed the phrase "electoral landslide" which seems deliberately chosen to evoke Reince Preibus's description of Donald Trump's electoral victory: https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2016/nov/21/reince-priebus/despite-losing-popular-vote-donald-trump-won-elect/ Source for electoral results: https://uselectionatlas.org/RESULTS/national.php?year=1864 ."  I suggest that the terminology "electoral landslide" for 1864 is standard history and predates Trump. For example "An easy victory and an electoral landslide returned Lincoln to the White House" and two other uses for 1864 appear in Mary Ellen Snodgrass, ed. The Civil War Era and Reconstruction: An Encyclopedia of Social, Political, Cultural and Economic History (2011) pp 231, 201. and 678. -- the book was published September 15, 2011.  Back in 1940 FDR won reelection by a small popular majority but a large electoral majority which Katz called an "electoral landslide" --Daniel Katz, "The public opinion polls and the 1940 election." Public Opinion Quarterly 5.1 (1941): 52-78.  Snodgrass makes the point that the popular vote in 1864 was "an easy victory"  Where this strange Donald Trump reference came from is certainly a mystery. Lincoln won 91% of the electoral vote and Trump won 57%. Rjensen (talk) 19:00, 26 January 2022 (UTC)
 * PS as far back as 2010 this article stated Lincoln won by a "landslide". see this 2010 page Rjensen (talk) 19:14, 26 January 2022 (UTC)

@Rjensen:

1. You have moved the goalposts from your initial justification to "keep terms used in 1860s" to quoting a book published in 2011.

2. "A landslide" is not the term "electoral landslide" which was inserted in this wikipedia entry in April 2017, after Preince Reibus used the term on national television.

https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=National_Union_Party_(United_States)&direction=next&oldid=772566897 — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2600:8807:C24E:2000:1AD:CFF6:165A:F822 (talk) 19:31, 26 January 2022 (UTC)

Further edit: Both instances of "electoral landslide" in Public Opinion Quarterly use the term in the context of saying an electoral landslide does not represent the will of the electorate, as can be read here:

https://archive.org/details/sim_public-opinion-quarterly_1941-03_5_1/page/56/mode/2up?view=theater&q=electoral+landslide — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2600:8807:C24E:2000:1AD:CFF6:165A:F822 (talk) 19:43, 26 January 2022 (UTC)
 * the use of "electoral landslide" for 1864 is standard historical scholarship--and the term dates back a century or more. A strange comment ("inserting Trump propaganda") about the 2016 election is irrelevant about 1864. Your assumption that "electoral landslide" implies LOSING the popular vote is nonsense for 1864 and no one ever made that odd suggestion before.  (you wrote "suggests that Lincoln / McClellan lost the popular vote, which they did not." but surely meant Lincoln/ Johnson) Rjensen (talk) 20:26, 26 January 2022 (UTC)