Talk:Ulysses S. Grant/GA3

GA Review
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Reviewer: Nikkimaria (talk) 03:52, 23 October 2010 (UTC)

Hello! I will be reviewing this article for GA status. My review should be posted within the next few days. Cheers, Nikkimaria (talk) 03:52, 23 October 2010 (UTC)
 * Unfortunately, I feel this article is not yet at GA status. I encourage you to re-nominate once the below concerns are addressed. Nikkimaria (talk) 20:23, 23 October 2010 (UTC)

Writing and formatting

 * ToC is incredibly long - some of the shorter subsections could be merged to increase accessibility
 * "he captured Vicksburg, captured another Confederate army" - wording is repetitive
 * . The Utahraptor Talk/Contribs 13:38, 6 November 2010 (UTC)


 * "hold new elections in 1867 with black voters that gave Republicans control of the Southern states" - grammar
 * Check formatting for service/branch and battles/wars in infobox
 * Washington does not count as "overseas". Do you mean he travelled by sea?
 * . The Utahraptor Talk/Contribs 17:22, 12 December 2010 (UTC)


 * "Commanding officer at Fort Humbolt, Bvt. Lt. Col. Robert C. Buchanan, had learned that Grant was intoxicated off duty while seated at the pay officer's table" - grammar
 * "From 1858–1859" - grammar
 * Don't link the same term multiple times, particularly not in close proximity
 * Fremont or Frémont?
 * . The Utahraptor Talk/Contribs 17:21, 12 December 2010 (UTC)


 * The article could use some copy-editing for clarity, consistency and flow
 * Don't include both categories and their subcategories
 * "Fish handled the crisis coolly" - who is Fish?
 * . The Utahraptor Talk/Contribs 17:19, 12 December 2010 (UTC)

Accuracy and verifiability

 * "Initially, Grant and President Andrew Johnson agreed to the Canadian invasion by the Fenians until British war ships were sent to protect the Canadian coastline. Johnson and Grant became more cautious in aiding the Fenians to prevent U.S. military supplies sold to the I.R.A. from being confiscated by the British" - source does not establish these motivations with respect to Grant
 * Narration tweak; removed unsupported sentence. Cmguy777 (talk) 19:58, 28 October 2010 (UTC)


 * Citations needed for the following:
 * At Monterrey, he carried a dispatch voluntarily on horseback through a sniper-lined street. He was twice brevetted for bravery: at Molino del Rey and Chapultepec. He was a remarkably close observer of the war, learning to judge the actions of colonels and generals, particularly admiring how Zachary Taylor campaigned
 * Up until the outbreak of the Civil War, Grant kept any political opinions private and never endorsed any candidate running for public office. He also, at this time, had no animosity toward slavery. His father-in-law was a prominent Democrat in St. Louis, a fact that contributed to a failed attempt to become county engineer in 1859. In the 1856 presidential election, he voted for the Democratic candidate James Buchanan to prevent secession and because "I knew Frémont", the Republican presidential candidate. In 1860, he favored Democratic presidential candidate Stephen A. Douglas over Abraham Lincoln, but did not vote.
 * As commanding general of the army, Grant had a difficult relationship with President Andrew Johnson, who preferred a moderate approach to reconstruction of the South and was increasingly at swords-point with the Radicals in Congress. Johnson tried to use Grant to defeat the Radical Republicans by making him the Secretary of War "ad-interim" in place of Edwin M. Stanton. Under the Tenure of Office Act, Johnson could not remove Stanton without the approval of Congress. When Congress reinstated Stanton as Secretary, Grant handed over the keys to the War Department and continued his military command. This made him a hero to the Radical Republicans, who gave him the Republican nomination for president in 1868. He was chosen as the Republican presidential candidate at the 1868 Republican National Convention in Chicago; he faced no significant opposition. In his letter of acceptance to the party, Grant concluded with "Let us have peace," which became his campaign slogan
 * None of the above paragraph is supported by the cited source - however, some of it (not all) may be supported by a wider page range (ref 45)
 * In the general election of that year, Grant won against former New York Governor Horatio Seymour with a lead of 300,000 votes out of 5,716,082 votes cast. Grant commanded an Electoral College landslide, receiving 214 votes to Seymour's 80. When he assumed the presidency, Grant had never before held elected office and, at the age of 46, was the youngest person yet elected president.
 * Grant's innovative Native American policy advocated their citizenship and denounced wars of extermination as "immoral and wicked".
 * This quotation appears later, but is phrased differently. Which is correct?
 * As more scandals were exposed during Grant's second term in office his personal reputation was severly damaged while any chance for a third term nomination vanished.
 * He favored a limited number of troops to be stationed in the South—sufficient numbers to protect Southern Freedmen, suppress the violent tactics of the Ku Klux Klan (KKK), and prop up Republican governors, but not so many as to create resentment in the general population
 * Grant continued to fight for black civil rights when he pressed for the former slaves to be "...possessed of the civil rights which citizenship should carry with it."
 * They aimed to turn Republicans out of office, suppress the black vote, and disrupt elections. In response to the renewed violent outbreaks against African Americans, Grant was the first President to sign a congressional civil rights act
 * At the conclusion of his second term, Grant wrote to Congress that, "Failures have been errors of judgment, not of intent."
 * His failure to establish working political alliances in Congress allowed the scandals to spin out of control
 * he involvement of U.S. Ambassador to Britain, Robert C. Schenck, owning stock in the Emma Silver Mine, although corrupt, was an embarrassment to the Administration, rather than a scandal. The primary instigator and contributor to many of these scandals was Grant's personal secretary, Orville E. Babcock, who indirectly controlled many cabinet departments and was able to delay investigations by reformers. Babcock had direct access to Grant at the White House and had tremendous influence over who could see the President
 * When Secretary Bristow discovered that the President's personal secretary Babcock was involved in the ring, Grant became defensive. Grant eventually defended Babcock in an unprecedented 1876 deposition during the Whiskey Ring graft trials. The result of Grant's deposition saved his friend Babcock with an acquittal. However, political enemies and the unpopularity of giving the deposition for Babcock ruined any chances for Grant getting a third term nomination.
 * He decided that Japan's claim to the islands was stronger and ruled in Japan's favor.
 * His popularity was fading however, and while he received more than 300 votes in each of the 36 ballots of the 1880 convention, the nomination went to James A. Garfield. Grant campaigned for Garfield, who won by a narrow margin. Grant supported his Stalwart ally Conkling against Garfield in the battle over patronage in spring 1881 that culminated in Conkling's resignation from office.
 * Grant first wrote several warmly received articles on his Civil War campaigns for The Century Magazine. Mark Twain offered Grant a generous contract for his memoirs, including 75% of the book's sales as royalties.
 * The Memoirs sold over 300,000 copies, earning the Grant family over $450,000. Twain promoted the book as "the most remarkable work of its kind since the Commentaries of Julius Caesar." Grant's memoir has been regarded by writers as diverse as Matthew Arnold and Gertrude Stein as one of the finest works of its kind ever written.
 * Grant's Tomb, the largest mausoleum in North America


 * Don't italicize quotations
 * Don't include external links in article text
 * All web citations need publisher and retrieval date
 * Use a consistent reference format
 * Note 2: source?
 * All print citations need page numbers
 * Don't include full citation details in Notes for sources included in References
 * Split non-cited sources from References into a Further reading section
 * Note 21: what is "passim"?
 * Identical notes should be combined - see WP:NAMEDREFS
 * In general, notes and references need cleaning up

Broad

 * Civil War section could be condensed slightly

Neutrality

 * "Some writers believe that Halleck was personally or professionally jealous of Grant" - which writers?
 * Please see WP:ASF and WP:W2W - avoid inserting editorial bias

Stability
Vandalism but no recent edit-warring; article is semi-protected

Images

 * Some captions need copy-editing and referencing
 * Check licensing for Ulysses_S._Grant_-_National_Portrait_Gallery.JPG - if PD-art applies, then CC-BY does not