Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/1880 Greenback National Convention/archive1


 * The following is an archived discussion of a featured article nomination. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the article's talk page or in Wikipedia talk:Featured article candidates. No further edits should be made to this page.

The article was promoted by Ian Rose via FACBot (talk) 23:34, 16 May 2015.

1880 Greenback National Convention

 * Nominator(s): Coemgenus (talk) 14:17, 4 April 2015 (UTC)

This article is about the political convention of a minor political party in 1880. The eventual nominee, James B. Weaver, collected only three percent of the presidential vote that year, but the issues debated in the convention's platform fights—women's suffrage, child labor, immigration, and the eight-hour-day—would become nationwide discussions for later generations. Enjoy! Coemgenus (talk) 14:17, 4 April 2015 (UTC)

Support Nineteenth-century monetary politics is a subject that I always enjoy reading and learning about. You've done a great job with this article, and I can safely support. That said, I have a couple of minor comments about things that caught my attention.


 * Origins: "...had reason to hope to improve on the results of 1876." Does this mean that some promising results meant that the Greenbackers believed they could do better in 1880? If so, I'd suggest rewording to "...had reason to believe that they could improve on the results of 1876."
 * Preliminaries: "After the Exposition, it hosted festivals and concerts for several years until it was demolished in 1892." I would probably relegate all of this to a footnote.

Other than that, everything looks good and proper to me. Nicely done!-RHM22 (talk) 20:21, 5 April 2015 (UTC)
 * I've made both of those changes. Thanks for the review! --Coemgenus (talk) 00:38, 6 April 2015 (UTC)

Image review
 * File:AlexanderCampbell.png: when/where was this first published? Nikkimaria (talk) 05:41, 11 April 2015 (UTC)
 * LOC just says "between 1865 and 1880", like most of the Brady-Handy collection. I updated the file. Thanks! --Coemgenus (talk) 12:42, 11 April 2015 (UTC)


 * Support Well done. Just a few quibbles.


 * Lede
 * "to select a presidential nominee" well, true, but also a vice presidential, and also a party platform, which could be as important as the candidate. Can a phrasing be found that implies that there are other things a convention does?
 * Fixed? I doubt think there's a concise way to say it, so I just said it. --Coemgenus (talk) 12:02, 13 April 2015 (UTC)
 * Butler
 * "In the 1860 presidential campaign, Butler sought compromise with the slave power and endorsed Senator Jefferson Davis of Mississippi for president." Was Jeff Davis running for president? US president that is?  If it was pre-conventions, possibly mention that and who Butler supported in the general election.
 * I didn't think Davis was running, but you know how it was in those days. Nobody ran, they just stood around and waited to be nominated (of course, we both know that's not the whole truth). The source on Butler didn't say, and it didn't say who he ended up voting for, though it mentions he became a Republican within a year. --Coemgenus (talk) 12:02, 13 April 2015 (UTC)
 * " in 1878 he ran for Governor of Massachusetts as an independent Greenbacker with Democratic support" Did he win?
 * He lost. I added that fact. --Coemgenus (talk) 12:16, 13 April 2015 (UTC)
 * Wright
 * Did Wright not seek re-election in 1862 or was he defeated?
 * The sources aren't completely clear, but I think he didn't run. A Democrat replaced him, so if he lost, it was at the party nomination stage. --Coemgenus (talk) 12:16, 13 April 2015 (UTC)
 * Other contenders
 * "Several other favorite son candidates" question need for word "other".
 * True. Fixed. --Coemgenus (talk) 12:31, 13 April 2015 (UTC)
 * Reunification
 * "The Committee on Permanent Organization voted to make Richard F. Trevellick, a Michigan trade union organizer, the permanent chairman of the convention." presumably the vote of the entire convention was needed to make him permanent chairman? In which case the "ask" should be "recommend" with an "as" before "the permanent"--Wehwalt (talk) 17:03, 12 April 2015 (UTC)
 * Good point. Fixed. That should be all of them. Thanks, Wehwalt, for the review. --Coemgenus (talk) 12:31, 13 April 2015 (UTC)

Comments from Mike Christie
Support. A well-written and interesting article. I can find almost nothing to comment on, but here are a couple of minor points that don't affect my support. -- Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 10:32, 2 May 2015 (UTC)
 * "In 1878, the situation was reversed: Wright ran as a Greenbacker, but was also supported by Democrats": was he elected this time? It appears from the following sentences that he was, but I think you might make it definite.
 * Any explanation for the half-vote for Wright in the first formal ballot?


 * Thanks for your support. I fixed the first point, but the second is a mystery. I've seen half-votes in other conventions where two rival delegations from the same state are both admitted but have to split their state's apportionment of votes (Massachusetts had this in the 1880 Democratic National Convention, for example). I don't know if that's what happened here, but it's possible. I don't have enough evidence to add that explanation, though, it's just a guess. The sources I've read ignore it. --Coemgenus (talk) 11:41, 2 May 2015 (UTC)
 * I had a poke through newspapers.com, and found two accounts of the convention; interestingly, the story they tell doesn't quite match your source. The Indiana Democrat for 6/17/1880, page 2, and the La Plata Home Press for 6/19/1880, page 2, give accounts you might like to look at; I can clip them if you don't have access.  Does your source cite the underlying source?  That was probably a newspaper too. Mike Christie (talk - contribs -  library) 15:07, 2 May 2015 (UTC)
 * I'd be glad to take a look (I don't have access to newspapers.com). The source I used, Lause, doesn't have a footnote for that paragraph, oddly enough, so I'd be curious what the newspapers say. --Coemgenus (talk) 01:25, 3 May 2015 (UTC)
 * Here are the links: and .  The counts seemed to be slightly different, and one account mentions that the formal vote didn't finish but ended in acclamation. Mike Christie (talk - contribs -  library) 02:35, 3 May 2015 (UTC)
 * I'm remembering now that I had trouble nailing down the exact numbers when I wrote it. I think I'll just work it up as prose and eliminate the chart altogether. Thanks for finding those sources! --Coemgenus (talk) 13:18, 3 May 2015 (UTC)

Source review - spotchecks not done
 * Check for MOS:LQ issues throughout
 * FN47: page formatting
 * Be consistent in whether you use "New York, New York" or just "New York". Nikkimaria (talk) 17:38, 13 May 2015 (UTC)
 * thanks for the source review. These should all be resolved now. --Coemgenus (talk) 02:15, 14 May 2015 (UTC)

Ian Rose (talk) 23:34, 16 May 2015 (UTC)
 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this page.