The book, composed of accounts of (fictitious) lectures on the silver issue given by an adolescent named Coin to Chicago audiences, became an immense bestseller. "[16], Even as Cleveland took office as president in March 1893, there were signs of an economic decline. At first, he rode in public cars, and made his own travel arrangements, looking up train schedules and even carrying his own bags from train station to hotel. National Archives and Records Administration. The 1896 campaign, which took place during an economic depression known as the Panic of 1893, was a realigning election that ended the old Third Party System and began the Fourth Party System. Elected to the House of Representatives in 1890, when he was just 30 years old, Bryan championed populist causes including the direct election of senators, graduated federal income tax and the free silver movement, which sought to expand the federal money supply by basing U.S. currency on silver as well as gold. [24][25] Several times, in his addresses, Bryan repeated variations on lines he had spoken in Congress in December 1894, decrying the gold standard, "I will not help to crucify mankind upon a cross of gold. Although Bryan was successful in winning the non-binding popular vote, Republicans gained a majority in the legislature and elected John Thurston as senator.[11]. [48], As the committees met, the convention proceeded, though in considerable confusion. He knew personally more delegates than did any other candidate and he was on the ground to supervise his strategy. Bryan often spoke on the issue of the currency. Biographies of the Secretaries of State: William Jennings Bryan (1860-1925). "1896 Presidential Election Results". (W.W. Norton & Company, 2018), William Jennings Bryan, the Great Commoner. Constitutional Rights Foundation, Spring 2010 (Volume 25, No. The jury predictably found Scopes guilty, but Bryans performance in the trial, and his thrashing in the national press, marked a less than stellar end to his long career as a public figure. Confusion over ballots in Minnesota resulted in 15,000voided votes and may have thrown that state to the Republicans. Each made their cases for gold, and likely changed few votes. In June 1896, Bryan's old teacher, former senator Trumbull died; on the day of his funeral, Bryan's mother also died, suddenly in Salem. The New York World reported, "The floor of the convention seemed to heave up. Bryan was quoting from an 1878 speech by Cleveland's Treasury Secretary, Hill remained neutral in the campaign, despite urgings to go over to the Gold Democrats, seeking to preserve his control of the state Democratic party, and also hoping (in vain) to secure his own re-election by the legislature. See, Last edited on 24 November 2022, at 01:09, United States presidential nominating convention, William McKinley 1896 presidential campaign, National Archives and Records Administration, Official Proceedings of the 1896 Democratic National Convention, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=William_Jennings_Bryan_1896_presidential_campaign&oldid=1123490165, This page was last edited on 24 November 2022, at 01:09. William Jennings Bryan was born in rural Salem, Illinois, in 1860. "[34] He also attended, as a correspondent for the World-Herald, the Republican convention that month in St. Louis. Loyal to Cleveland, they wanted to nominate him. Bryan Club" and "Keep Your Eye on Nebraska. The election of 1896 is seen as the beginning of a new era in American politics, or a "realignment" election. Book Description Mr. Bryan's unfinished memoirs, which close with an account of the Baltimore convention of 1912, make up less than half the . Bryan remained at his hotel, sending word to his fellow Nebraskans, "There must be no pledging, no promising, on any subject with anybody. "[101] Many Populists saw the election of Bryan, whose positions on many issues were not far from theirs, as the quickest path to the reforms they sought; a majority of delegates to the convention in St. Louis favored him. The Democrats nominated Arthur Sewall, a wealthy Maine banker and shipbuilder, for vice president. He was utterly confident that he would succeed, believing "the logic of the situation," as he later put it, dictated his selection. William Jennings Bryan, (born March 19, 1860, Salem, Illinois, U.S.died July 26, 1925, Dayton, Tennessee), Democratic and Populist leader and a magnetic orator who ran unsuccessfully three times for the U.S. presidency (1896, 1900, and 1908). William Jennings Bryan (1860-1925), the U.S. congressman from Nebraska, three-time presidential nominee and secretary of state, emerged near the end of the 19th century as a leading voice in the. [38] Illinois Governor Altgeld, a leader of the silver movement, was ineligible because he was not a natural-born U.S. citizen as required for the presidency in the Constitution. He supported many Populist policies. On April 22, 1893, the amount of gold in the Treasury dropped below $100million for the first time since 1879, adding to the unease. At that time, Nebraska was suffering hard times as many farmers had difficulties making ends meet due to low grain prices, and many Americans were discontented with the existing two major political parties. The electoral vote was not as close: 271 for McKinley to 176 for Bryan. [146] The election of 1896 marked a transition as the concerns of the rural population became secondary to those of the urban; according to Stanley Jones, "the Democratic Party reacted with less sensitivity than the Republicans to the hopes and fears of the new voters which the new age was producing". They read Bryan when they couldn't go off to listen to him. At every stop, he made contacts that he later cultivated. In 1896 it was kept as a forum, and by day and night men and womenmet there to talk about the Crime of '73, the fallacies of the gold standard, bimetallism and international consent, the evils of the tariff, the moneybags of Mark Hanna, the front porch campaign of McKinley. [85][86] Some of the Democratic political machines, such as New York's Tammany Hall, decided to ignore the national ticket and concentrate on electing local and congressional candidates. Though he continued to publicly oppose U.S. involvement in World War I after his resignation, Bryan changed course after the nation entered the conflict in 1917 due to extensive popular support for the war effort. As the presidential election year of 1896 began, things were looking rosy for the Republicans. Many were disappointed; the Democratic candidate read a two-hour speech from a manuscript, wishing to look statesmanlike, and fearing that if he spoke without a script, the press would misrepresent his words. [115], Bryan's plan for victory was to undertake a strenuous train tour, bringing his message to the people. Cross of Gold speech, classic of American political oratory delivered on July 8, 1896, by William Jennings Bryan in closing the debate on the party platform at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago during the campaign for the presidential election of 1896. In March 1898, two years into William McKinley's first term as president, he gave Spainwhich was in the midst of a brutal campaign of repression in . [140] The Democratic Party preserved control in the eastern cities through machine politics and the continued loyalty of the Irish-American voter; Bryan's loss over the silver issue of many German-American voters, previously solidly Democratic, helped ensure his defeat in the Midwest. The proposed platform was pro-silver; Senator Hill had offered an amendment backing the gold standard, which had been defeated by committee vote. Bryan, a former Democratic congressman from Nebraska, gained his party's presidential nomination in July of that year after electrifying the Democratic National Convention with his Cross of Gold speech. [67], Bryan described the stillness as "really painful"; his anxieties that he might have failed were soon broken by pandemonium. Now among the most famous politicians in the country, Bryan would run twice more for president, losing again to McKinley in 1900 and to William Howard Taft in 1908. Only Bryan was left to speak, and no one at the convention had yet effectively championed the silver cause. Nevertheless, Gold Democrats began plans to hold their own convention, which took place in September. The nation was regionally split, with the industrial East and Midwest for McKinley, and with Bryan carrying the Solid South and the silver strongholds of the Rocky Mountain states. [39] When Senator Teller walked out of the Republican convention in protest over the currency plank, he immediately became another possible candidate for the Democratic nomination for president. In 1890, he agreed to run for Congress against William James Connell, a Republican, who had won the local congressional seat in 1888. The only areas of the nation where Bryan took a greater percentage of the urban than the rural vote were New England and the Rocky Mountain states; in neither case did this affect the outcome, as Bryan took only 27% of New England's vote overall, while taking 88% of the Rocky Mountain city vote to 81% of the vote there outside the cities. William Jennings Bryan delivering a campaign speech in 1910. By the 1930s, he had built the nations largest media empire, including more than two dozen newspapers in major cities nationwide, read more, Populism is a style of politics used to mobilize mass movements against ruling powers. Chicago banker Charles G. Dawes, a McKinley advisor who had known Bryan when both lived in Lincoln, had predicted to McKinley and his friend and campaign manager, Mark Hanna, that if Bryan had the chance to speak to the convention, he would be its choice. [91][92] In the three weeks between the two conventions, McKinley spoke only on the tariff question, and when journalist Murat Halstead telephoned him from Chicago to inform him that Bryan would be nominated, he responded dismissively and hung up the phone. The minority report attracted the opposite reaction.[54]. "[145] Bryan's own explanation was brief: "I have borne the sins of Grover Cleveland. His campaign focused on silver, an issue that failed to appeal to the urban voter, and he was defeated in what is generally seen as a realigning election. He was not yet done with campaigning, however; on November 2, he undertook a train journey across Nebraska in support of Democratic congressional candidates. [2][3], While attending law school from 1881 to 1883, Bryan was a clerk to former Illinois senator Lyman Trumbull, who influenced him in a dislike for wealth and business monopolies. The majority felt exposed, crestfallen, and humiliated.[56]. [29], Bryan faced a number of disadvantages in seeking the Democratic nomination: he was little-known among Americans who did not follow politics closely, he had no money to pour into his campaign, he lacked public office, and had incurred the enmity of Cleveland and his administration through his stance on silver and other issues. The billionaire businessman ran as a Republican and scored an upset victory over his Democratic opponent, Hillary Clinton, in the 2016 read more, John McCain first entered the public spotlight as a Navy fighter pilot during the Vietnam War. According to Stanley Jones, "the only conclusion to be reached was that the Bryan campaign, with its emphasis on the free coinage of silver at 16 to 1, had not appealed to the urban working classes. Palmer was a 79-year-old former Union general, Buckner a 73-year-old former Confederate of that rank; the ticket was the oldest in combined age in American history, and Palmer the second-oldest presidential candidate (behind Peter Cooper of the Greenback Party; Bryan was the youngest). [33] Bryan spoke at her funeral, quoting lines from Second Timothy: "I have fought a good fight, I have finished my course, I have kept the faith. Historian H. Wayne Morgan described Bryan: Robert La Follette remembered Bryan as "a tall, slender, handsome fellow who looked like a young divine". Meanwhile, Hanna raised millions from business men to pay for speakers on the currency question and to flood the nation with hundreds of millions of pamphlets. Through the almost three decades before his death in 1925, he was ever present on political platform and speaking circuit, fighting first for silver, and then for other causes. Bryan always regarded that argument as the speech's most powerful part, despite the fame its conclusion would gain. At a speech in Chicago on Labor Day, Bryan varied from the silver issue to urge regulation of corporations. The convention, by voice vote, seated the silver Nebraskans, who arrived in the convention hall a few minutes later, accompanied by a band. [103] Populist leader Henry Demarest Lloyd described silver as the "cow-bird" of the Populist Party, which had pushed aside all other issues. [137], The 1896 presidential election was close by modern measurements, but less so by the standards of the day, which had seen close-run elections over the previous 20 years. After running unsuccessfully for the Senate in 1894, Bryan returned to Nebraska and became editor of the Omaha World-Herald. "[52], On the morning of July 9, 1896, thousands of people waited outside the Coliseum, hoping to hear the platform debate. [69] In the midst of the crazed crowd, Altgeld, a Bland supporter, commented to his friend, lawyer Clarence Darrow, "That is the greatest speech I ever listened to. They had been passed as compromises between free silver and the gold standard. The Populists proposed both greater government control over the economy (with some calling for government ownership of railroads) and giving the people power over government through the secret ballot, direct election of United States Senators (who were, until 1913, elected by state legislatures), and replacement of the Electoral College with direct election of the president and vice president by popular vote. [147] This was evidenced in the tariff question: Bryan spent little time addressing it, stating that it was subsumed in the financial issue; Republican arguments that the protective tariff would benefit manufacturers appealed to urban workers and went unrebutted by the Democrats. "[143], Michael Kazin, Bryan's biographer, notes the many handicaps he faced in his 1896 campaign: "A severe economic downturn that occurred with Democrats in power, a party deserted by its men of wealth and national prominence, the vehement opposition of most prominent publishers and academics and ministers, and hostility from the nation's largest employers". Bryans pacifist stance put him increasingly at odds with the president, however, and he resigned in 1915 in protest after Wilson sent a second note to Germany demanding an end to submarine warfare after the sinking of the Lusitania, an action Bryan felt went too far toward violating American neutrality. These results made the Midwest the crucial battlefield that would decide the presidency. It began as a simple courtesy, with a telegram that William Jennings Bryan sent. [93] When Bryan was nominated on a silver platform, the Republicans were briefly gratified, believing that Bryan's selection would result in an easy victory for McKinley. [122] He did not campaign on Sundays, but on most other days spoke between 20 and 30 times. The 1896 Democratic National Convention repudiated the Cleveland administration and nominated Bryan on the fifth presidential ballot. They hoped the Democrats either would not endorse silver in their platform or if they did, that the Democratic candidate would be someone who could be painted as weak on silver. He maintained contact with silver partisans in other parties, hopeful of gathering them in after a nomination. Although defeated in the election, Bryan's campaign made him a national figure, which he remained until his death in 1925. While speaking in McKinley's hometown of Canton, Ohio, Bryan yielded to impulse and called upon his rival at his home with Congressman Bland; the Republican candidate and his wife, somewhat startled, received the two men hospitably in a scene Williams calls, "surely bizarre. [46], Just before the convention, the Democratic National Committee (DNC) made initial determinations of which delegations were to be seatedonce convened, delegates would make the final determination after the convention's Credentials Committee reported. [120], On September 11, 1896, Bryan departed on a train trip that continued until November 1, two days before the election. [108] According to Stanley Jones in his study of the 1896 campaign, "Bryan expected that he alone, carrying to the people the message of free silver, would win the election for his party. Historian James A. Barnes deemed the DNC's vote immaterial; once the convention met on July 7, it quickly elected a silver man, Virginia Senator John Daniel, as temporary chairman and appointed a committee to review credentials friendly to the silver cause. Bryan, an attorney and former Congressman, galvanized support with his Cross of Gold speech, which called for a reform of the monetary system and attacked business leaders as the cause of ongoing economic depression. why did william jennings bryan lose the election of 1896? [14] After his election to Congress, Bryan studied the currency question carefully, and came to believe in free silver; he also saw its political potential. Carrying some 200 people, the train bore signs on each of its five cars, such as "The W.J. Lose identity, simplify their cause to one policy (free coinage of silver), sacrifice rest of platform Why did Populists endorse Bryan? Many Republican leaders had gone on vacation for the summer, believing that the fight, on their terms, would take place in the fall. Retrieved May 19, 2012. The book included (as foils to the title character) many of Chicago's most prominent men of business; some, such as banker and future Secretary of the Treasury Lyman Gage, issued denials that they had participated in any such lectures. Both had openly declared their candidacies, and were the only Democrats to have organizations seeking to obtain pledged delegates. "[145], The consequences of defeat, however, were severe for the Democratic Party. The 1878 BlandAllison Act and the Sherman Silver Purchase Act of 1890 required the government to buy large quantities of silver and strike it into coin. [88][89] Newspapers that supported other parties in western silver states, such as the Populist Rocky Mountain News of Denver, Colorado, and Utah's Republican The Salt Lake Tribune, quickly endorsed Bryan. Subscribe for fascinating stories connecting the past to the present. In addition to the frontrunners, other silver men were spoken of as candidates. [43] He explained to Champ Clark, the future Speaker of the House, that Bland and others from southern states would fall because of prejudice towards the old Confederacy, that Boies could not be nominated because he was too little-known, and all others would fail due to lack of supportleaving only himself.[44]. [f] McKinley even won the urban vote in Nebraska. T.G.O.D Y.O.L.O The leading candidates were former Missouri congressman Richard P. Bland and former Iowa governor Horace Boies. Bryan was well rested. "[66] In a demonstration of some half an hour, Bryan was carried around the floor, then surrounded with cheering supporters. He was admitted to the Illinois bar and began practicing law in Jacksonville, marrying Mary Elizabeth Baird in 1884; the couple went on to have three children. As an evangelical Christian and a believer in the literal interpretation of the Bible, Bryan also saw a grave threat in the application of Charles Darwins theory to human society. The presidents of this eraRutherford B. Hayes, James Garfield, Chester Arthur, Grover Cleveland, and Benjamin Harrisonare often remembered as colorless and ineffective. Why did the populist party support william jennings Bryan for president in the presidential election of 1896? Bryan signed on as chief prosecutor, facing off against the criminal defense attorney Clarence Darrow. The 1908 United States presidential election was the 31st quadrennial presidential election, held on Tuesday, November 3, 1908. Even in the South, Bryan attracted 59% of the rural vote, but only 44% of the urban vote, taking 57% of the southern vote overall. South Carolina Senator Benjamin Tillman, a silver supporter, wanted an hour to address the convention, and to close the debate. Party members in many states, including Nebraska, demanded inflation of the currency through issuance of paper or silver currency, allowing easier repayment of debt. We come to speak of this broader class of business men.[62][63]. However, the President ruled this out; his Cabinet members also refused to run. It was not until 10:45am, three-quarters of an hour late, that Chairman White called the convention to order. Taken prisoner after his plane was shot down, he suffered five and a half years of torture and confinement before his release in 1973. The man who is employed for wages is as much a business man as his employer; the attorney in a country town is as much a business man as the corporation counsel in a great metropolis; the merchant at the cross-roads store is as much a business man as the merchant of New York; the farmer who goes forth in the morning and toils all day, who begins in spring and toils all summer, and who by the application of brain and muscle to the natural resources of the country creates wealth, is as much a business man as the man who goes upon the Board of Trade and bets upon the price of grain; the miners who go down a thousand feet into the earth, or climb two thousand feet upon the cliffs, and bring forth from their hiding places the precious metals to be poured into the channels of trade are as much business men as the few financial magnates who, in a back room, corner the money of the world. "[130], In September, the Gold Democrats met in convention in Indianapolis. McKinley did well in the border states of Maryland, West Virginia, and Kentucky. This advocacy brought him contributions from silver mine owners in his successful re-election bid in 1892. A large banner outside the Clifton House proclaimed the presence of Nebraska's delegation headquarters, but did not mention Bryan's campaign, which was run from Nebraska's rooms. The biggest announcement in the run-up to the 1908 presidential election came in 1904 when, on the evening of his election, Pres. Any possible candidacy depended on silver supporters being successful in electing the bulk of convention delegates; accordingly Bryan backed such efforts. Southern newspapers stayed with Bryan; they were unwilling to endorse McKinley, the choice of most African Americans, though few of them could vote in the South. According to his biographer Michael Kazin, "Bryan felt he was serving his part in a grander conflict that began with Christ and showed no sign of approaching its end. The coalition of wealthy, middle-class and urban voters that defeated Bryan kept the Republicans in power for most of the time until 1932. The sympathies of the Democratic Party, as shown by the platform, are on the side of the struggling masses, who have ever been the foundation of the Democratic Party. Arthur F. Mullen, a resident of O'Neill, Nebraska, described the summer and fall of 1896: O'Neill buzzed with political disputation from dawn till next dawn. Bryan believed he could use the coalition-building techniques he had applied in gaining election to Congress, uniting pro-silver forces behind him to gain the Democratic nomination and the presidency. On this day in 1896, William Jennings Bryan delivered his rousing speech as a delegate to the Democratic convention declaring that mankind would not be "crucified on a cross of gold.". 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