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. [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. Set off by the collapse of the powerful Philadelphia & Reading Railroad, the Panic of 1893 plunged the nation into a deep economic depression. No delegation must be permitted to violate instructions given by a state convention. Jill Lepore. 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. [20], In March 1895, the same month he left Congress, Bryan passed his 35thbirthday, making him constitutionally eligible for the presidency. At every stop, he made contacts that he later cultivated. Our delegation should not be too prominent in applause. [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. [144] According to Kazin, "what is remarkable is not that Bryan lost but that he came as close as he did to winning. Throughout the nation, voters were intensely interested in the campaign, studying the flood of pamphlets. 3). The Democrats lost control of both houses of Congress in the 1894 midterm elections, with a number of southern states, usually solid for the Democrats, electing Republican or Populist congressmen. To that end, it was important that the Populists not nominate a rival silver candidate, and he took pains to cultivate good relations with Populist leaders. The coalition of wealthy, middle-class and urban voters that defeated Bryan kept the Republicans in power for most of the time until 1932. Despite his electoral losses, Bryan continued to exert considerable influence through his fervently religious speeches as well as a weekly magazine, the Commoner. [13] Bryan, who had been elected after the passage of the latter enactment, initially had little to say on the subject. [53] Once White started the proceedings, he turned over the gavel to Senator Jones, who read the proposed platform to great applause from silver delegates, and hissing from gold men. His enemies regarded him as an ambitious demagogue, but his supporters viewed him as a champion of liberal causes. When he spoke of himself as the nominee, some reacted as [journalist] Willis J. Abbot did and doubted his mental capacity. "use strict";(function(){var insertion=document.getElementById("citation-access-date");var date=new Date().toLocaleDateString(undefined,{month:"long",day:"numeric",year:"numeric"});insertion.parentElement.replaceChild(document.createTextNode(date),insertion)})(); FACT CHECK: We strive for accuracy and fairness. McKinley did well in the border states of Maryland, West Virginia, and Kentucky. The coalition of wealthy, middle-class and urban voters that defeated Bryan kept the Republicans in power for most of the time until 1932. If those in favor of honest money don't do something to offset its influence the country is going to the dogs. Palmer proved an able campaigner who visited most major cities in the East, and in the final week of his campaign, told listeners, "I will not count it any great fault if next Tuesday you decide to cast your ballots for William McKinley. Carrying some 200 people, the train bore signs on each of its five cars, such as "The W.J. 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. Bryan sensed the possibility of becoming the nominee long before 1896; his ambition was fully matured several months prior to the convention, and there is evidence that his hopes were becoming tinged with certainty before he left for Chicago. [116] Although Hanna and other advisors urged McKinley to get on the road, the Republican candidate declined to match Bryan's gambit, deciding that not only was the Democrat a better stump speaker, but that however McKinley travelled, Bryan would upstage him by journeying in a less comfortable way. "[109], Bryan set the formal acceptance of his nomination for August 12 at New York's Madison Square Garden; he left Lincoln five days earlier by rail, and spoke 38times along the way, sometimes from the trackside in his nightgown. This popular treatment of the currency issue was highly influential. The answer was simple, Bryan told Abbothe had prepared a speech that would stampede the convention. 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. [5], Bryan quickly became prominent in Lincoln as a lawyer and a public speaker, becoming known as the "Boy Orator of the Platte". [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. [135], William and Mary Bryan returned to Lincoln on November 1, two days before the election. Bryan had rightly pointed that the defect of the Gold Standard when it was first implemented was that there was not enough gold in comparison to the rising needs of the growing American economy. The minority report attracted the opposite reaction.[54]. We have submitted the issues to the American people and their will is law. [e] In his account, Bryan quoted a letter by Senator Jones: "No matter in how small sums, no matter by what humble contributions, let the friends of liberty and national honor contribute all they can to the good cause. Source (Electoral Vote): "Electoral College Box Scores 17891996". When early-voting Maine and Vermont went strongly Republican in September, this meant that McKinley would most likely win the Northeast. "[145] Bryan's own explanation was brief: "I have borne the sins of Grover Cleveland. (Credit: Bettmann Archive/Getty Images). Active in Democratic Party politics, Sewall was one of the few eastern party leaders to support silver, was wealthy and could help finance the campaign; he also balanced the ticket geographically. [35] Bryan was deeply moved when, after the adoption of the platform, Colorado Senator Henry M. Teller led a walkout of silver-supporting Republicans. Everybody seemed to go mad at once. Senator Jones felt compelled to spend five minutes (granted by the gold side), stating that the silver issue crossed sectional lines. 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. Much of the blizzard of paper the Republican campaign was able to pay for concentrated on this area/ By September, this had its effect as silver sentiment began to fade. He was a fine actor, with a justly famous voice, but was not a charlatan. "[123] After a brief interval for handshakes, the train would pull out again, to another town down the track.[123]. He was followed by Senator William Vilas of Wisconsin and former Massachusetts Governor William D. Russell. William Jennings Bryan (March 19, 1860 - July 26, 1925) was an American lawyer, orator and politician. Others dubbed Bryan a "Popocrat". Any possible candidacy depended on silver supporters being successful in electing the bulk of convention delegates; accordingly Bryan backed such efforts. This was a matter of intense interest for the silver delegates: Bryan had written to large numbers of delegates urging them to support his men over their gold rivals; once in Chicago, he and his fellow Nebraskans had spoken with many others about the dispute. Historian H. Wayne Morgan described Bryan: Robert La Follette remembered Bryan as "a tall, slender, handsome fellow who looked like a young divine". Author: William Jennings Bryan Publisher: Haskell House Pub Limited ISBN: Size: 56.95 MB Format: PDF, ePub, Docs View: 4174 Get Book Disclaimer: This site does not store any files on its server.We only index and link to content provided by other sites. On April 22, 1893, the amount of gold in the Treasury dropped below $100million for the first time since 1879, adding to the unease. Bryan". In 1896, William Jennings Bryan ran unsuccessfully for president of the United States. His campaign was low-key, without excessive publicity: Bryan did not want to attract the attention of more prominent candidates. He was young, had a respectable but not burdensome record, came from the West, and understood the arts of conciliation. The presidential election in 1896, a contest between the Republican candidate, William McKinley (1843-1901), and the Democrat candidate, William Jennings Bryan (1860-1925), was contested over McKinley's pledge to maintain the gold standard for the nation's currency, in contrast to Bryan's promise to increase the supply of money by expanding the . "[16], Even as Cleveland took office as president in March 1893, there were signs of an economic decline. These included Vice President Adlai Stevenson of Illinois, Senator Joseph C. Blackburn of Kentucky, Indiana Governor Claude Matthews, and Bryan. 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. In 1890, he agreed to run for Congress against William James Connell, a Republican, who had won the local congressional seat in 1888. [40] President Cleveland spent the week of the convention fishing, and had no comment about the events there; political scientist Richard Bensel attributes Cleveland's political inaction to the President's loss of influence in his 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. 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 1896 race is generally seen as a realigning election. The election of 1896 was just as much a partisan battle over the future of American economic policy as the 2012 election. 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. However, many delegates disliked Sewall because of his wealth and ownership of a large business, and believed that nominating someone else would keep Populist issues alive in the campaign. Free silver especially resonated among farmers in the South and West, as well as miners. Populists claim to speak for ordinary people, taking an "us versus them" stance. "[66] In a demonstration of some half an hour, Bryan was carried around the floor, then surrounded with cheering supporters. The position involved no day-to-day duties, but allowed him to publish his political commentaries. After the fourth ballot, the Illinois delegation caucused and Altgeld was one of only two remaining Bland supporters, thus giving Bryan all of the state's 48 votes and bringing him near the two-thirds mark and the nomination. [17] In this, they were led by Illinois Governor John Peter Altgeld, who had opposed Cleveland over the Pullman strike. He won the prize in his junior year, and also secured the affection of Mary Baird, a student at a nearby women's academy. Despite his defeat, Bryan's campaign inspired many of his contemporaries. "1896 Presidential Election Results". Thanks in advance if you have any recommendations! An ardent read more, A native of Tennessee, Al Gore served as vice president of the United States under President Bill Clinton from 1992 to 2000, after a long tenure in the U.S. House of Representatives and U.S. Senate. June 1894 marked the publication of William H. Harvey's Coin's Financial School. It was badly received even by silver delegates, who wished to think of silver as a patriotic, national issue. [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. In 1904, Taft took on the role of secretary of war in the administration read more, William Randolph Hearst (1863-1951) launched his career by taking charge of his fathers struggling newspaper the San Francisco Examiner in 1887. 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. Granted by the gold side ), stating that the silver issue crossed sectional lines policy the. Did and doubted his mental capacity William H. Harvey 's Coin 's Financial.! Bryan told Abbothe had prepared a speech that would stampede the convention ) an! 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