Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Horace Greeley/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) 11:11, 21 February 2015 (UTC) [1].

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Horace Greeley

Nominator(s): Wehwalt (talk) 21:46, 13 January 2015 (UTC)

This article is about... Horace Greeley, editor of the New-York Tribune and Democratic/Liberal Republican candidate for president in 1872. He may have been the most influential man in America in the 1850s and 1860s, possibly even more than Lincoln for part of the Civil War. This is, I should add, a Vital Article. Enjoy.Wehwalt (talk) 21:46, 13 January 2015 (UTC) Nominated by leave of Graham Beards although my previous nom hasn't quite cleared the page.--Wehwalt (talk) 21:46, 13 January 2015 (UTC)

Support: This man should have been president (Greeley, I mean, not Wehwalt – though who knows?) but he was saddled with a most unfortunate unelectability. I learned a great deal about him during my extensive peer review (link here if anyone wants a look) including that he didn't actually say the words which even the Oxford Dictionary of Quotations credits him with ("Go West, young man..." etc}. His ideas seem mightily progressive for the Gilded Age, but he was an odd-looking cove, which counted against him. So the electors rejected him, time and again, for every office he sought. But he has my vote. Support for the article is subject to clearance on sources and images – I'll do the source review myself if I can find time, but I shall be away for 10 days from Friday. Generally, a most impressive article on an important and fascinating individual. Brianboulton (talk) 21:52, 14 January 2015 (UTC)

Thank you very much for the campaign contribution, I mean review and support. Enjoy your time away.--Wehwalt (talk) 22:28, 14 January 2015 (UTC)

Sources review

All sources look to be of appropriate quality and reliability. A few general issues:

• Ref 6 requires pp.
• Some adjoining refs overlap, e.g. 29 & 30, 35 & 36, maybe others
• Ref 96 requires pp.
• Only the Taliaferro book in the bibliography gives publisher location.
• "Further reading": the lists include Nevins's DAB and Lunde's ANB entries, both of which are cited sources and shouldn't appear under this heading. I don't think it's a good idea to list further reading items as secondary and primary sources. If they are not cited, they are not sources for this article, so another label should be used. Also, is it necessary to have quite so many "further readings"? The formats in these lists are a little untidy – some years bracketed, others not; inconsistency on publisher locations; "online" v. "online edition" etc. Personally I would trim and tidy these lists.

Brianboulton (talk) 15:25, 15 January 2015 (UTC)

Thank you for those. I've fixed 6 and 96 and cleaned up the Further reading, dividing it between books by Greeley and other works. I did try to remove the DNB entries, but Rjensen feels that the book form is useful to have there, and I'm inclined to defer to him on this one. The further reading section, I'm afraid, is one I spend not a great deal of time on.--Wehwalt (talk) 23:19, 16 January 2015 (UTC)

Comments by Coemgenus

Lede

• Looks fine overall. My only quibble is with the last sentence. I find "prior to" is almost always better replaced by "before". It's not something worth opposing over, but I think it's best to use more direct language, when possible.

Concur and will change.

Cool. Don't know if you're a fan, but Bryan A. Garner's work on legal writing influenced me on a lot of things like that.

I read one of his books with Scalia when I did Scalia's article. I'll see if I can hunt it up.

Early life

"...Zaccheus's financial reverses caused him to flee New Hampshire..." Is this a flight from creditors and the sheriff, or just a change of location in hopes of a new start?

The former. The farm and possessions were sold at auction. Zaccheus feared debtor's prison. Williams, p. 11.

OK. I don't know if it's worth adding, but I don't know if modern readers realize how badly debt could affect a person back then.

Added.

First efforts

• Do his biographers indicate where Greeley got the capital to launch the New-Yorker?

Greeley, in his autobiography, indicates he had earned some money and had a partner.

Editor of the Tribune

• You cite Nevins, but don't list the work in the primary bibliography.

Arrgh. Will check into this.

• I don't completely understand how Greeley got to Congress. Was he the Whig candidate in a special election, or were replacement House members appointed in those days?

I guess that was how it was done in New York, anyway. The Whig Committee for the Sixth Ward (district) picked him. There's a certain justice in it, the Whigs were cheated of the seat by Jackson, they got to decide who filled it is unusual by today's standards, where all House members are elected by the people (something not necessarily true of the Senate).

OK, then it's fine as it is. I just wasn't aware that was how it went down back then.

Came as a surprise to me too. I assumed all House members were always elected by the people, or whatever part of them got to vote anyway.

• I'd consider linking Louis Kossuth and some of the other "-isms" Greeley is accused of following. They may be unfamiliar to average readers.

I thought about it but I'm uncertain if I could correctly ascertain all of them.--Wehwalt (talk) 15:10, 15 January 2015 (UTC)

That's fine. The point of the statement, I guess, was that Greeley was a weird guy into weird ideas. That's clear without a sea of blue links. --Coemgenus (talk) 14:13, 17 January 2015 (UTC)

Just so. It saves me the trouble of actually discussing all these things, which probably the reader doesn't care about too much.

• " In an editorial on November 9," It seems like you're missing a couple of words here.
• "When the attack on Fort Sumter took place..." might be better as "When the rebels attacked Fort Sumter..." or something similar.

Presidential candidacy

• "For this, he was attacked as a seeker after office." There's just something off about this sentence. Maybe something about how personally campaigning was seen as unseemly and grasping at the time would work better.

• Everything else looks ship-shape to me. Nice article, I look forward to supporting. --Coemgenus (talk) 15:11, 15 January 2015 (UTC)

Thank you for that. Except as noted, I think I've caught everything.--Wehwalt (talk) 23:53, 16 January 2015 (UTC)

Great, looks good. I'm happy to support. Good luck! --Coemgenus (talk) 14:13, 17 January 2015 (UTC)

Thanks for the review and support.--Wehwalt (talk) 14:43, 17 January 2015 (UTC)

Image review

• Influence caption should italicize Tribune
• File:Horace_Greeley_Signature.svg: do we have a date or original source for the sig? Nikkimaria (talk) 16:20, 16 January 2015 (UTC)

I traced it down and it came from [2], but that doesn't work. Since signatures are not copyrightable, we can still use the existing signature. If there's a major problem with that, I'll hunt another one down. I just hate to ask Connormah, who is very helpful to me on this sort of thing, to do unnecessary work. On the other one, are we talking about the image of the Tribune staff? Because I looked at it and the only problem with the caption is that it needed a hyphen, which I've added.--Wehwalt (talk) 23:36, 16 January 2015 (UTC)

Support – for some reason the peer review passed me by, but in any case I have found only four infinitesimally small points to quibble about:

• First efforts at publishing
  • "Constitutionalist, that mostly printed lottery" – as this is a non-restrictive, descriptive clause I think you want "which" here
  • "1836–1837" – I believe the MoS suggests the form "1836–37"

It's only a suggestion. That would involve changing every range in the bibliography. I think it's best left as is.

• Draft Riots and peace efforts
  • "The books were very successful … a very large sale for the time" – perhaps lose the second "very"?
  • "Lincoln said nothing publicly, but privately indicated that he had no confidence in Greeley anymore" – it isn't obvious why Greeley had lost Lincoln's confidence.

I've tweaked it thanks.--Wehwalt (talk) 13:10, 1 February 2015 (UTC)

Nothing there to prevent a declaration of support for this enjoyable and informative article. Plainly meets all the FA criteria in my view. – Tim riley talk 09:07, 1 February 2015 (UTC)

Thank you for your kind words and your support. Except as noted, I've done those things.--Wehwalt (talk) 13:10, 1 February 2015 (UTC)

Comments by Dudley

• "He was defeated by President Ulysses S. Grant on Election Day, but died before the casting of the electoral vote." I would delete "on Election Day" as superfluous.

I guess. I'll take it out and see how it looks.

• "the House of Representatives, where he angered many by investigating Congress in his newspaper." This does not sound right to me. Perhaps reporting misconduct by Congressmen?

On balance, I think the existing language should stand. The travel allowance issue required congressmen to travel (when at public expense) by the shortest post route. A majority of them didn't, and put in expenses higher, even though the post routes were published (even Lincoln put in such expenses). They were reimbursed, and all this sounds systemic enough that "Congress" is a better term.

• "backing other candidates against Seward at the 1860 Republican National Convention, and supporting the nominee, Abraham Lincoln." You do not say that Seward was a candidate for presidential nominee.
• "Although ambitious for greater things, he remained into 1831 to help support his father." Perhaps "until" 1831.

Both the above done.

• "he was defeated by the Democrat, former Tennessee governor James K. Polk, despite strenuous efforts by Greeley on his behalf" This seems to imply that a candidate supported by Greeley should have won!

I've rephrased.

• "Under the laws then in force, the Whig committee from the Sixth District chose Jackson's replacement" So did the law say that if a congressman was unseated, the committee of the rival party nominated his replacement?

That seems to be it. There is a certain justice to it, if you look at it the right way.

• "opposing the annexation of the new Republic of Texas to the United States." Presumably because slavery was legal in Texas, but should this should be explained.

Clarified.

• According to the article on Seward, one of the reasons he lost the nomination was that at that stage he had come out against slavery when Lincoln was still equivocating. If this is correct, I think it should be made clear.

You may have glanced at it hastily. Seward's opposition was to the expansion of slavery, that is why the Kansas-Nebraska Act was a Big Deal. Lincoln had also opposed the expansion of slavery in his two unsuccessful Senate runs. Seward's problems included a tendency towards the memorable phrase ("irrepressible conflict") that made him anathema in the South, a long pro-immigrant record that made him vulnerable in states where the Know-Nothings were strong, and a number of enemies. Being more prominent than Lincoln had its drawbacks, as every time Seward rose to his feet in the Senate he was likely to offend someone or other. Lincoln sat quietly in Springfield. But Greeley's opposition was in large part out of his grudge against Seward.

• "for Senate in the legislative election held in early 1867, to be defeated by Roscoe Conkling." As Conkling was a Republican, Greeley was presumably defeated in a primary. This should be made clear.

This was an election by the legislature. There was no primary yet. Sometimes the legislators from each party met in caucus to agree a candidate.

• "The Democrats, when they met in Baltimore in July, faced a stark choice—either nominate Greeley, long a thorn in their side, or split the anti-Grant vote and go to certain defeat." So Greeley wanted to be a Republican president and suddenly he is adopted by the Democrats, accused of supporting the Ku Klux Klan and winning only a handful southern slave states. I think this needs more explanation.

Greeley was not in a position to turn down the Democrats' support. Remember, they adopted the LibRep platform. By the rules of the game, they crossed the bridge into the LibRep camp. He won the states where the black Republicans were not in full control.

• A fascinating article, but I cannot quite make up my mind about Greeley. I cannot see his justification for turning against Seward, or joining with the Democrats at the end, but of course I am talking about a subject which I know nothing about. Dudley Miles (talk) 00:21, 10 February 2015 (UTC)

The Seward thing was in part for personal reasons. He and the Democrats had common ground, as is mentioned in the article, they both agreed on Reconstruction ending, and they both disliked Grant. Coalitions have been formed on less.--Wehwalt (talk) 04:01, 10 February 2015 (UTC)

Support. A fine article. Dudley Miles (talk) 10:33, 15 February 2015 (UTC)

Thank you for the review and support.--Wehwalt (talk) 11:49, 15 February 2015 (UTC)

• Closing note: This candidate has been promoted, but there may be a delay in bot processing of the close. Please see WP:FAC/ar, and leave the {{featured article candidates}} template in place on the talk page until the bot goes through. Ian Rose (talk) 11:11, 21 February 2015 (UTC)

The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this page.