Talk:Greenback Party

Monetary Policy

The heart of the Greenback Party is their monetary policy. I am thinking of expanding on that and perhaps creating a section on it within the wiki article. Just wondering how much it should dominate the article, basically how much macroeconomic theory be injected into it into this article of a political party? They were essentially a one trick pony that tried to expand their platform but did it ineffectively. There is just so little history on them as a party but a wealth of economic research on the effects of of the US adopting their monetary principles. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Gunzac21 (talk • contribs) 02:11, 26 March 2012 (UTC)

Collaboration

I'm doing some research for a project. I wanted to improve some sections on the page. I want to improve the sections that talk about the Greenback Party's platform and why they expanded their beliefs. I need help looking for some of the economic parts to their beliefs and some of the effects that their ideas have had on the developments of the time. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Dsimpson92 (talk • contribs) 01:51, 29 March 2012 (UTC)

My only concern is that this cannot partake of original research and synthesis. --Orange Mike | Talk 21:07, 24 April 2012 (UTC)

Alexander Campbell

Campbell was elected to the 44th Congress, before the party as such was created; but he's one of the founding fathers of the Greenbacks. Should he be listed in the list of Greenback Congressmen? --Orange Mike | Talk 13:09, 1 May 2012 (UTC)

2012 Rewrite

I'm taking things to a full rewrite, trying to get ongoing sourcing issues taken care of and so forth. Hopefully nobody's ox is being gored in the process, scream at me if there's an issue. Carrite (talk) 03:31, 17 July 2012 (UTC)

Mousover

Whenever I mousover the link to this page from another page, it says "That section wasn't important anyways." This page doesn't say that, so why is that showing up? No other links are doing so, so I assume it's a problem with the page. 207.201.216.62 (talk) 16:08, 3 February 2023 (UTC)

"National Independent" Party?

The previous version of this article claimed that the Independent (Greenback) Party changed its name to the National Independent Party in 1875. Consulting Kleppner in comparison to the published convention proceedings from 1876, this would seem to be an error. "National," although capitalized, is a descriptive adjective rather than part of the organization's name--i.e. it is the convention of the "national" Independent Party as opposed to the state or municipal Independent Party. The Republican and Democratic convention proceedings similarly refer to the "National Republican Convention" and "National Democratic Convention," but those organizations were not named the National Republican or National Democratic parties. The platform adopted by the "National Independent" convention, on p. 14, begins, "The following is the platform of the Independent Party."

Accordingly, I have gone through and edited the article to clarify that the name of the national organization prior to 1878 was the Independent Party, not the "National Independent" party. Nathaniel Greene (talk) 19:39, 1 November 2025 (UTC)

Wikitable for the House Results

Should the formatting of this WIP Wikitable be adjusted?

U.S. House of Representatives
Election	Nominees (and Endorsees)	Votes					Seats				Control		Performance Map
		No.	Share	Share (Where Contesting)	Share (Total)		No.	±	No. (Party and Endorsed)	±
1876-1877	41 G	43,787	0.53 / 100	3.33 / 100	1.11 / 100		0 / 293		0 / 293		Democratic
	3 D	47,532	0.58 / 100	44.66 / 100			0 / 293
1878–1879	190 G	864,555	12.29 / 100	17.69 / 100	15.16 / 100	13 / 293	13	18 / 293	18	Democratic
	Candidate Performance AL-1 ▌Warner Bailey - 2,491 votes - (30.90%) AL-5 ▌Theodore Nunn - 2,734 votes - (29.49%) AL-8 ▌William M. Lowe - 10,323 votes - (55.49%) AR-2 ▌John G. Bradley - ? votes - (43.80%) AR-3 ▌Milton L. Rice - ? votes - (48.81%) AR-4 ▌Byrd Smith - ? votes - (10.80%) CO-AL ▌Henry C. Childs - 2,329 votes - (8.14%) CT-1 ▌Herbert Baker - 997 votes - (?%) CT-4 ▌James S. Taylor - 1,848 votes - (?%) DE-AL ▌John G. Jackson - 2,966 votes - (21.90%) GA-5 ▌Reuben Arnold - 8,196 votes - (44.36%)
	11 D, 3 R, 3 Ind, 1 Lab	201,379	2.86 / 100	43.84 / 100		5 / 293	5
	Candidate Performance IN-12 ▌John Studebaker (Rep.) - 9,712 votes - ( 36.27%) MD-4 ▌William M. Springer (Lab.) - 627 votes - (3.34%) MA-5 ▌Nathan Clark (Dem.) - 10,918 votes - (41.63%) MA-11 ▌Edward H. Lathrop (Butler Dem.) - 7,994 votes - (37.86%) MN-1 ▌William Meighan (Dem.) - 12,845 votes - (39.66%) MN-3 ▌Ignatius L. Donnelly (Dem.) - 17,929 votes - (46.12%) NE-AL ▌J. W. Davis (Dem.) - 21,752 votes - (43.42%) NJ-2 ▌Hezekiah B. Smith (Dem.) - 14,610 votes - (50.59%) NY-6 ▌Samuel S. Cox (Dem.) - 10,908 votes - (62.44%) NY-8 ▌Lawrence R. Jerome (Dem.) - 7,512 votes - ( 35.49%)

Ariostos (talk) 02:22, 19 January 2026 (UTC)

Political position

It is probably easy enough to find sources that refer to the Greenback Party in this way but our current citation does not. It only states "In the decades after the Civil War, workers and farmers around the country formed a wide array of insurgent political movements to give voice to their grievances: the Greenback Party, the Readjusters, the Socialist Labor Party, and, above all, the People’s (Populist) Party."

The only use of "left wing" in the text is a paragraph earlier where it refers to unnamed "left-wing and labor" parties created in the 1820s and 1830s.

In between this and the reference to the Greenbackers it talks about the Free Soil, Liberty, and Republican Parties which we presumably would not all label as left-wing simply because they are mentioned in the same article.

We should find a new citation that does call the Greenbackers left-wing or else change it to fit that can be established from sources already cited in the article. Chilltherevolutionist (talk) 23:20, 6 May 2026 (UTC)