THE RISE OF THE SILVER ISSUE
In every national campaign since the time silver was demonetized in 1873 the demand for bimetallism has been a platform plank always of one and frequently of both of the two great political parties. The first unequivocal renunciation of the policy and theory of bimetallism on the part of any important national convention occurred in June, 1900, at Philadelphia. In 1896 the Republican party, in its platform adopted at St. Louis, pledged itself to the promotion of bimetallism by international agreement. The Democratic party, both in 1896 and 1900, expressed its conviction that bimetallism could be secured by the independent action of the United States, and to that end demanded “the free and unlimited coinage of both gold and silver, at the present legal ratio of 16 to 1, without waiting for the aid or consent of any other nation.”
Previous to 1896 each of the great political parties made quadrennial expressions of faith in the bimetallic theory, frequently demanded its enactment into law, and generally condemned the opposing party for “hostility to silver.” And yet, despite the universal belief in bimetallism on the part of the American people; despite the general demands for bimetallism made by both political parties; despite the many and eloquent speeches for bimetallism delivered in Congress and out of it by party leaders of all complexions, the hope of its becoming an actuality seemed to wither and wane in inverse ratio to the fervency of the expressions of friendship on the part of the politicians. Sometimes those who were most vehement in their demands were most instrumental in the passage of that series of legislative enactments that inevitably broadened and deepened the gulf between gold and silver.
In explanation of this phenomenon it may be said that of all the functions of government none is more important than the power to regulate the quality and quantity of its circulating medium; none more freighted either with prosperity or disaster to its people; and none more liable to make demagogues of statesmen and knaves and hypocrites of those in authority.
The first overt act in the fight against bimetallism, which theretofore had been insidious, was the demand of the Cleveland administration and the powers that were behind it for the repeal of the purchasing clause of the Sherman Act. The clause which was aimed at provided for the purchase by the government of bar silver sufficient for the annual coinage of $54,000,000. With its repeal would disappear from the Federal statute books the last vestige of authority for the coinage of silver money other than subsidiary coins.
In the fight against the administration over this measure Mr. Bryan took a leading part. He was one of the public men whose professions and practices in the matter of financial legislation were not at variance. In his first campaign for Congress, in 1890, he had inserted in his platform this plank, written by himself:
“We demand the free coinage of silver on equal terms with gold and denounce the efforts of the Republican party to serve the interest of Wall Street as against the rights of the people.”
In 1891 he had secured the adoption of a free silver plank in the Nebraska Democratic platform. In 1892 he made a hard fight for a similar plank in the state platform, but lost by a very close vote. On the day before the national convention which nominated Mr. Cleveland for president, Mr. Bryan was renominated for Congress on a platform in which free coinage was made the paramount issue, and throughout the campaign he devoted to it the major portion of his time. In this way, from free choice and impelling conviction, Mr. Bryan had committed himself to the doctrine of bimetallism and had declared his plan for putting it into practice.
Mr. Bryan made his first speech in Congress against unconstitutional repeal on February 9, 1893. In it he said:
“I call attention to the fact that there is not in this bill a single line or sentence which is not opposed to the whole history of the Democratic party. We have opposed the principle of the national bank on all occasions, and yet you give them by this bill an increased currency of $15,000,000. You have pledged the party to reduce the taxation upon the people, and yet, before you attempt to lighten this burden, you take off one-half million of dollars annually from the national banks of the country; and even after declaring in your national platform that the Sherman act was a ‘cowardly makeshift’ you attempt to take away the ‘makeshift’ before you give us the real thing for which the makeshift was substituted.... Mr. Speaker, consider the effect of this bill. It means that by suspending the purchase of silver we will throw fifty-four million ounces on the market annually and reduce the price of silver bullion. It means that we will widen the difference between the coinage and bullion value of silver and raise a greater obstacle in the way of bimetallism. It means to increase by billions of dollars the debts of our people. It means a reduction in the price of our wheat and our cotton. You have garbled the platform of the Democratic party. You have taken up one clause of it, and refused to give us a fulfilment of the other and more important clause, which demands that gold and silver shall be coined on equal terms without charge for mintage.
“Mr. Speaker, this can not be done. A man who murders another shortens by a few brief years the life of a human being; but he who votes to increase the burden of debts upon the people of the United States assumes a graver responsibility. If we who represent them consent to rob our people, the cotton-growers of the South and the wheat-growers of the West, we will be criminals whose guilt can not be measured by words, for we will bring distress and disaster to our people.”
In thus boldly and positively aligning himself against the policy of the dominant wing of his own party, which would soon be backed by the incoming Cleveland administration, Mr. Bryan acted with his characteristic devotion to principle. He could not help seeing that all the odds were apparently against that faction of his party with which he threw in his fortunes. Mr. Cleveland and most of the old, honored, and powerful leaders of democracy, it was known, would join in the fight against silver. They would have the powerful aid of the great Republican leaders and be backed by the almost united influence of the hundreds of daily newspapers in all the large cities. Wealth, influence, experience, and so-called “respectability” were all to be the property of the Cleveland wing. Many trusted leaders of the old-time fight for silver succumbed to the temptation and identified themselves with the dominant faction. Not so Mr. Bryan. On the failure of the bill to pass he returned home and devoted all his time to a thorough study of finance and of money, making the most careful and complete preparation for the fight which he saw impending.
The great struggle, which Mr. Bryan has termed “the most important economic discussion which ever took place in our Congress” was precipitated by President Cleveland when he called Congress to meet in special session on August 7, 1893. Mr. Wilson, of West Virginia, Chairman of the Ways and Means Committee, introduced in the House the administration measure for the unconditional repeal of the purchasing clause of the Sherman Act.
CHAS. A. TOWNE
The debate that ensued was one of the most brilliantly and ably conducted in the annals of Congress. On August 16, near the close of the debate, Mr. Bryan delivered an extended argument against the bill. His speech in point of profound reasoning and moving oratory stands prominent in the list of congressional deliverances. It concluded with the following magnificent appeal:
“To-day the Democratic party stands between two great forces, each inviting its support. On the one side stand the corporate interests of the nation, its moneyed institutions, its aggregations of wealth and capital, imperious, arrogant, compassionless. They demand special legislation, favors, privileges, and immunities. They can subscribe magnificently to campaign funds; they can strike down opposition with their all-pervading influence, and, to those who fawn and flatter, bring ease and plenty. They demand that the Democratic party shall become their agent to execute their merciless decrees.
“On the other side stands that unnumbered throng which gave a name to the Democratic party, and for which it has assumed to speak. Work-worn and dust-begrimed they make their sad appeal. They hear of average wealth increased on every side and feel the inequality of its distribution. They see an overproduction of everything desired because of an underproduction of the ability to buy. They can not pay for loyalty except with their suffrages, and can only punish betrayal with their condemnation. Although the ones who most deserve the fostering care of Government, their cries for help too often beat in vain against the outer wall, while others less deserving find ready access to legislative halls.
“This army, vast and daily growing, begs the party to be its champion in the present conflict. It can not press its claims mid sounds of revelry. Its phalanxes do not form in grand parade, nor has it gaudy banners floating on the breeze. Its battle hymn is ‘Home, Sweet Home,’ its war cry ‘equality before the law.’ To the Democratic party, standing between these two irreconcilable forces, uncertain to which side to turn, and conscious that upon its choice its fate depends, come the words of Israel’s second law-giver: ‘Choose you this day whom ye will serve.’ What will the answer be? Let me invoke the memory of him whose dust made sacred the soil of Monticello when he joined
‘The dead but sceptered sovereigns who still rule
Our spirits from their urns.’
“He was called a demagogue and his followers a mob, but the immortal Jefferson dared to follow the best promptings of his heart. He placed man above matter, humanity above property, and, spurning the bribes of wealth and power, pleaded the cause of the common people. It was this devotion to their interests which made his party invincible while he lived, and will make his name revered while history endures.
“And what message comes to us from the Hermitage? When a crisis like the present arose and the national bank of the day sought to control the politics of the nation, God raised up an Andrew Jackson, who had the courage to grapple with that great enemy, and by overthrowing it he made himself the idol of the people and reinstated the Democratic party in public confidence. What will the decision be to-day?
“The Democratic party has won the greatest success in its history. Standing upon this victory-crowned summit, will it turn its face to the rising or the setting sun? Will it choose blessings or cursings—life or death—Which? Which?”
The bill passed the House by a considerable majority and went to the Senate. In two months it came back with Senate amendments. So earnest and determined was Mr. Bryan in his opposition to the measure that he resorted to dilatory tactics, employing every legitimate parliamentary weapon to obstruct its progress. When finally even the enemies of the bill would no longer assist him in the fight for delay, Mr. Bryan determined to abandon the fight in Congress to carry it before the Democracy of the nation. In concluding his last speech on the bill he said:
“You may think that you have buried the cause of bimetallism; you may congratulate yourselves that you have laid the free coinage of silver away in a sepulchre, newly made since the election, and before the door rolled the veto stone. But, sirs, if our cause is just, as I believe it is, your labor has been in vain: no tomb was ever made so strong that it could imprison a righteous cause. Silver will lay aside its grave clothes and its shroud. It will yet rise and in its rising and its reign will bless mankind.”
Though defeated in the first great contest, the silver advocates were far from dismayed. They began at once a systematic fight to wrest from the administration the control of the party organization. The factional fight within the ranks of Democracy gave early promise of becoming exceedingly bitter. The feeling was accentuated from the start by the personal efforts of President Cleveland in behalf of the repeal bill. In the Senate the silver men had what was considered a safe majority, and it was to overcome this and secure the passage of the bill that the President had directed his energies. His great weapon was Federal patronage, and he used it as a club. Never before in the history of popular government in the United States had the executive so boldly and so openly exerted the tremendous influence of his position in an attempt to force a coordinate branch of government into unwilling compliance with his wishes. Mr. Cleveland’s interference, which finally accomplished its purpose, was angrily resented by the Silver Democrats, and the lines between administration and anti-administration were early closely drawn.
Mr. Bryan, while the repeal bill was still under discussion in the Senate, attended the Nebraska State Democratic convention as a delegate, on October 4, 1893. In the convention the administration wing of the party was regnant, imperious, and arrogant. A platform endorsing the President and his fight against silver was adopted by a large majority. Bryan was even denied a place on the resolutions committee, although endorsed therefor by his Congressional district, which almost alone had sent silver delegates. His course in Congress was repudiated and himself personally received with but scant courtesy or consideration on the part of the great majority of the delegates. When the gold men, flushed with victory, were about to complete their conquest, the discredited young Congressman sprang to the platform to address the convention. His whole person was quivering with emotion, and as he spoke he strode up and down the platform with a mien of unconcealed anger and defiance. Never was he more truly the orator, and never was tame beast so abject and so pitiful under the scourge of the master as was that convention, mute and defenseless, under his scathing excoriation. The following extract will give an idea of the substance of the speech, though the flashing eyes of the orator, the tense and quivering frame, the voice now ringing with defiance, now trembling with emotion,—these may never be described.
“Mr. Chairman and Gentlemen of the Convention—We are confronted to-day by as important a question as ever came before the Democracy of the state of Nebraska. It is not a personal question. It is a question that rises above individuals. So far as I am personally concerned it matters nothing whether you vote this amendment up or down; it matters nothing to me whether you pass resolutions censuring my course or endorsing it. If I am wrong in the position I have taken on this great financial question, I shall fall though you heap your praises upon me; if I am right, and in my heart, so help me God, I believe I am, I shall triumph yet, although you condemn me in your convention a hundred times. Gentlemen, you are playing in the basement of politics; there is a higher plane. You think you can pass resolutions censuring a man, and that you can humiliate him. I want to tell you that I still ‘more true joy in exile feel’ than those delegates who are afraid to vote their own sentiments or represent the wishes of the people, lest they may not get Federal office. Gentlemen, I know not what others may do, but duty to country is above duty to party, and if you represent your constituents in what you have done and will do—for I do not entertain the fond hope that you who have voted as you have to-day will change upon this vote—if you as delegates properly represent the sentiment of the Democratic party which sent you here; if the resolutions which have been proposed and which you will adopt express the sentiments of the party in this state; if the party declares in favor of a gold standard, as you will if you pass this resolution; if you declare in favor of the impoverishment of the people of Nebraska; if you intend to make more galling than the slavery of the blacks the slavery of the debtors of this country; if the Democratic party, after you go home, endorses your action and makes your position its permanent policy, I promise you that I will go out and serve my country and my God under some other name, even if I must go alone.”
But Mr. Bryan was not destined to be driven from the Democratic party. He returned to Washington to persistently fight the financial policy of the administration until the Fifty-third Congress had adjourned. The withdrawal of the greenbacks, the granting of additional privileges to national banks, the Rothschild-Morgan gold-bond contract—these he opposed with the full measure of his mental and physical powers. In the meantime the Silver Democrats began the work of organization and propaganda in every state in the Union. In 1894 Bryan triumphed over his enemies in Nebraska in a convention whose platform declared, “We favor the immediate restoration of the free and unlimited coinage of gold and silver at the present ratio of 16 to 1, without waiting for the aid or consent of any other nation on earth.” The Gold Democrats bolted the platform and the ticket. And until the last delegate was elected to the National convention which was to meet at Chicago in July, 1896, the Silver Democrats continued everywhere their efforts. They fought boldly and outspokenly against the administration they had helped to elect, and which was nominally Democratic. The result of their fight was the instruction of almost two-thirds of the delegates for an unambiguous free silver plank, with a certainty that the Gold Democrats, headed by President Cleveland, Secretary of the Treasury Carlisle, and hundreds of the leaders of the party, would bolt the action of the convention.
Thus torn and rent by dissentions, with little hope or prospect for success, the Democracy faced that remarkable convention which was to repudiate the administration itself had placed in power.
THE PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE
(1896)
In the fall of 1896, within the period of one hundred days, William J. Bryan traveled eighteen thousand miles. He delivered over six hundred speeches to crowds aggregating five millions of people. Reduced to figures more readily comprehended, he averaged each day one hundred and eighty miles of railroad travel, interrupted by the stops necessary for the delivery of six speeches to crowds of over eight thousand each and fifty thousand in all. This was his personal service in the “first battle” for the restoration of bimetallism, acting as the standard bearer of three political parties.
The great presidential campaign of 1896 was in many respects the most remarkable in the history of the United States. It turned upon an issue which was felt to be of transcending importance, and which aroused the elemental passions of the people in a manner probably never before witnessed in this country save in time of war. It was an issue forced by the voters themselves despite the unceasing efforts of the leading politicians of both great parties to keep it in the background. Beneath its shadow old party war cries died into silence; old party differences were forgotten; old party lines were obliterated. As it existed in the hearts of men the issue had no name. Bimetallism was discussed; monometallism was discussed; these were the themes of public speakers, editors, and street corner gatherings when recourse was had to facts and argument. But when one partisan called his friend the enemy an “Anarchist!” and when the latter retorted with the cry of “Plutocrat,” then there spoke in epithets the feelings which were stirring the American people, and which made the campaign significant. For the terms indicated that for the first time in the Republic founded on the doctrine of equality, Lazarus at Dives’ gate had raised the cry of injustice, whereat the rich man trembled.
The Republican National convention met at St. Louis on June 16. William McKinley, of Ohio, was nominated for President and Garret A. Hobart, of New Jersey, for Vice-President. A platform was adopted declaring for the maintenance of “the existing gold standard” until bimetallism could be secured by international agreement, which the party was pledged to promote. The doctrine of a high protective tariff was strongly insisted on.
Against the financial plank of the platform there was waged a bitter, if hopeless, fight by the silver men of the West, under the honored leadership of United States Senator Henry M. Teller, of Colorado. On the adoption of the platform Senators Teller, Dubois, of Idaho, Pettigrew, of South Dakota, Cannon, of Utah, and Mantle, of Montana, with three congressmen and fifteen other delegates, walked out of the convention. They issued an address to the people declaring monetary reform to be imperative, that the deadly curse of falling prices might be averted. The dominant figure of this convention was Marcus A. Hanna, of Ohio, a millionaire coal and shipping magnate with large industrial and commercial interests in various sections of the country. In taking charge of the campaign that resulted in McKinley’s nomination he introduced his business methods into politics. He had conducted the canvass throughout along commercial lines. “He has been as smooth as olive oil and as stiff as Plymouth Rock,” said the New York Sun, since recognized as President McKinley’s personal organ. “He is a manager of men, a manipulator of events, such as you more frequently encounter in the back offices of the headquarters of financial and commercial centers than at district primaries or in the lobbies of convention halls. There is no color or pretense of statesmanship in his efforts; he seems utterly indifferent to political principles, and color-blind to policies, except as they figure as counters in his game. He can be extremely plausible and innocently deferential in his intercourse with others, or can flame out on proper occasion in an outburst of well-studied indignation. He is by turns a bluffer, a compromiser, a conciliator, and an immovable tyrant. Such men do not enter and revolutionize national politics for nothing. Now, what is Mark Hanna after?”
The question was soon answered. Mark Hanna became chairman of the National Republican committee, United States senator from Ohio, and the most powerful, if not the all-powerful, influence behind the McKinley administration. His rapid rise to commanding position and the unyielding manner in which he has utilized his power have furnished much argument to such as are inclined to be pessimistic regarding the enduring qualities of republics.
Early in July the Democratic National convention assembled in Chicago. Mr. Bryan, who had attended the St. Louis convention as editor-in-chief of the Omaha World-Herald, was here present as a delegate-at-large from Nebraska. Since the expiration of his second congressional term he had been active and unwearying in the fight to capture the convention for free silver. As editor of the World-Herald he had contributed numerous utterances that were widely quoted by the silver press, and much of his time had been devoted to delivering speeches and lectures in the interests of bimetallism in almost every section of the country. He came to Chicago fresh from a Fourth of July debate at the Crete, Neb., Chautauqua, with Hon. John P. Irish, of California, Cleveland’s collector of the port at San Francisco. Except a few intimate friends in Nebraska, who knew Bryan’s capacities and ambitions, no man dreamed of the possibility of his nomination for the presidency. There were available, tried, and time-honored silver leaders, men who had been fighting the white metal’s battles for a score of years, notable among whom were Richard P. Bland, of Missouri, and Henry M. Teller, of Colorado. One of these, it was generally believed, would be chosen to lead the forlorn hopes of a regenerated but disrupted democracy.
Mr. Bryan’s nomination was the spontaneous tribute of the convention to those qualities that since have made him not famous only, but well-beloved. These qualities are honesty, courage, frankness, and sincerity. They had veritable life in every line and paragraph of his great speech defending the free silver plank of the platform, delivered in reply to the crafty-wise David B. Hill, of New York. Hill, skilled and experienced practical politician, had pleaded with the convention that it pay the usual tribute at the shrine of Janus. He had begged that the ignus fatuus “international bimetallism” be used to lure the friends of silver into voting the Democratic ticket. Nurtured and trained in the same school of politics as William McKinley,—the school whose graduates had for many years dominated all party conventions,—Hill started back in affright from the prospect of going before the people on a platform that was straightforward and unequivocal, with its various planks capable of but one construction.
Mr. Bryan’s speech was as bold and ringing as the platform which he spoke to defend, with its plank, written by himself, and twice utilized in Nebraska, demanding “the free and unlimited coinage of both gold and silver at the present legal ratio of 16 to 1, without waiting for the aid or consent of any other nation.”
The letter and spirit of that plank were such as the great majority of the convention were thoroughly in sympathy with. The result of the great silver propaganda of the two years preceding had been to send to the convention honest and sincere men with profound convictions and the courage to express them. To do this, they knew, would be revolutionary, even as had been the platforms on which the Pathfinder, Fremont, and the Liberator, Lincoln, ran. But the spirit of revolution from cant and equivoque was rife in that convention. Of that spirit William Jennings Bryan was the prophet. In a speech that thrilled into men’s minds and hearts his defiance and contempt of the opportunists’ policy, his own fearless confidence in the all-conquering power of truth, he stirred into an unrestrained tempest the long pent emotions of the delegates. When he had finished not only was the adoption of the platform by a vote of two to one assured, but the convention had found its leader whom it would commission to go forth to preach the old, old gospel of democracy, rescued from its years of sleep. The nature of Mr. Bryan’s speech may be gained from these brief extracts:
“When you (turning to the gold delegates) come before us and tell us we are about to disturb your business interests, we reply that you have disturbed our business interests by your course. We say to you that you have made the definition of a business man too limited in its application. 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 a 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 the 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. We come to speak for this broader class of business men.
“Ah, my friends, we say not one word against those who live upon the Atlantic Coast, but the hardy pioneers who have braved all the dangers of the wilderness, who have made the desert to blossom as the rose,—the pioneers away out there (pointing to the west), who rear their children near to Nature’s heart, where they can mingle their voices with the voices of the birds, out there where they have erected schoolhouses for the education of their young, churches where they praise their Creator, and cemeteries where rest the ashes of their dead—these people, we say, are as deserving of the consideration of our party as any people in this country. It is for these that we speak. We do not come as aggressors. Our war is not a war of conquest; we are fighting in defense of our homes, our families, and posterity. We have petitioned, and our petitions have been scorned; we have entreated, and our entreaties have been disregarded; we have begged, and they have mocked when our calamity came. We beg no longer; we entreat no more; we petition no more. We defy them....
“You come and tell us that the great cities are in favor of the gold standard; we reply that the great cities rest upon our broad and fertile prairies. Burn down your cities and leave our farms, and your cities will spring up again as if by magic; but destroy our farms and the grass will grow in the streets of every city in the country....
“My friends, we declare that this nation is able to legislate for its own people on every question, without waiting for the aid or consent of any other nation on earth.... It is the issue of 1776 over again. Our ancestors, when but three millions in number, had the courage to declare their political independence of every other nation. Shall we, their descendants, when we have grown to seventy millions, declare that we are less independent than our forefathers? No, my friends, that will never be the verdict of our people. Therefore, we care not upon what lines the battle is fought. If they say bimetallism is good, but that we can not have it until other nations help us, we reply that, instead of having a gold standard because England has, we will restore bimetallism, and then let England have bimetallism because the United States has it. If they dare come out in the open field and defend the gold standard as a good thing, we will fight them to the uttermost. Having behind us the producing masses of this nation and the world, supported by the commercial interests, the laboring interest, and the toilers everywhere, we will answer their demand for a gold standard by saying to them: You shall not press down upon the brow of labor this crown of thorns; you shall not crucify mankind upon a cross of gold.”
SENATOR J. K. JONES
Mr. Bryan was nominated for President on the fifth ballot by a well-nigh unanimous vote, save for the 162 eastern delegates who, while holding their seats, sullenly refused to take any part in the proceedings. The demonstration following the nomination was even wilder and more prolonged than the memorable scene that marked the conclusion of his speech.
For Vice-President Arthur Sewall, of Maine, was nominated. With this ticket, on a platform declaring for free silver, opposing the issue of bonds and national bank currency, denouncing “government by injunction,” declaring for a low tariff, the Monroe doctrine, an income tax, and election of senators by a direct vote of the people, the democracy went before the country with a confidence and exuberance little anticipated before the convention met, and scarcely justified, as later proven, by the outcome.
The Populist and Silver Republican conventions met in St. Louis late in July. The latter endorsed the nominees of the Chicago platform and made them their own. The populists, however, while nominating Mr. Bryan, refused to nominate Mr. Sewall, naming for vice-president Thomas E. Watson, of Georgia.
The gold democrats met at Indianapolis on September 2, and nominated John M. Palmer, of Illinois, and Simon Buckner, of Kentucky, adopting the first gold standard platform ever presented to the people of the United States for endorsement. They called themselves “National Democrats,” but in the outcome carried but one voting precinct in the nation, and that in Kansas. Four votes were cast in the precinct, two for Palmer, and one each for Bryan and McKinley. In the precinct in Illinois where Mr. Palmer himself, with his son and coachman, voted, not a single ballot was cast for the nominee of the “National Democracy.” The fact was that a new party alignment was the inevitable result of the Chicago convention, the reorganized democracy gaining largely beyond the Missouri, but losing heavily east of the Mississippi and north of the Ohio. Hundreds of thousands of gold Democrats in the populous states, under the leadership of Grover Cleveland and John G. Carlisle, while pretending to support Palmer and Buckner, voted secretly for McKinley, whose platform was a virtual endorsement of the Cleveland administration, as Bryan’s platform repudiated and condemned it.
The campaign was remarkable not only for Bryan’s wonderful campaigning, but for the bitter feeling that pervaded both organizations. The Republicans particularly excelled in vituperative abuse. They began the use of billingsgate immediately after the Chicago convention had adjourned, applying to it such terms as “rabble,” “wild Jacobins,” “anarchists” and “repudiators,” while Bryan was characterized as a “boy orator” “a demagogue” and “an ass.” The Cleveland Leader said:
“Bryan, with all his ignorance, his cheap demagogy, his intolerable gabble, his utter lack of common sense, and his general incapacity in every direction, is a typical Democrat of the new school. His weapon is wind. His stock in trade is his mouth. Mr. McKinley’s election—and we apologize to Mr. McKinley for printing his name in the same column with that of Bryan—is no longer in any doubt whatever. We salute the next President. As for Bryan, he is a candidate for the political ash-heap.”
For efficient campaigning the two party organizations were most unevenly matched. The Republican National committee, under the directing genius of Mark Hanna, assisted liberally by the thoroughly affrighted financial and corporation magnates of the East, had at its disposal millions of dollars with which to organize, pay for speakers and literature, reward the efforts of newspapers and party workers, and debauch the electorate in states thought to be doubtful. It had the assistance of almost the entire metropolitan press—with the notable exception of the New York Journal—and the nearly united influence of the large employers of labor. And even further, it had the pulpit and the religious press. As the ministers of Christ’s gospel, in 1856, denounced and vilified Garrison and Phillips, so in 1896 they hurled anathema maranatha at Bryan and Altgeld. Grave and reverend preachers of national fame fulminated from their pulpits against “the accursed and treasonable aims” of Bryan and his supporters, and denounced them as “enemies of mankind.” Bishop John P. Newman, of the Methodist Episcopal Church, denounced Bryan as an “anarchist,” and in the church conferences over which he presided urged the clergy to use their influence to defeat the Democratic nominees. The Rev. Cortland Myers, in the Baptist Temple at Brooklyn, said that “the Chicago platform was made in hell.” Rev. Thomas Dixon, Jr., at the Academy of Music, New York, called Bryan “a mouthing, slobbering demagogue, whose patriotism is all in his jaw bone.”
Such were the cultured and scholarly contributions made by the noblest of professions to the discussion of an academic question of finance in the year of our Lord 1896.
The Democratic committee had little money. It had the support of but few large newspapers. It was fighting the battles of a party that had been disrupted and rent in twain at the Chicago convention. In every state and almost every county of the Union the old local and national leaders of the party had deserted, and the faithful but disorganized followers of Bryan had to be moulded anew into the likeness of an army.
The one inspiration of the party was in its leader. The embodiment of faith, hope, and courage, tireless, indomitable, undismayed by the fearful odds against him, with the zeal of a crusader he undertook his mission of spreading the message of democracy through the length and breadth of the land. For three months, accompanied most of the time by Mrs. Bryan, he sped to and fro across the American continent, an army of newspaper correspondents in his train, resting little and sleeping less, preaching the Chicago platform. His earnestness, his candor, his boldness, the simplicity of his style, the homeliness of his illustrations, the convincing power of his argument, the eloquence of his flights of oratory, and, above all, the pure and lovable character of the man as it impressed itself on those who met with him—these were the sparks that fired the hearts of men and left in his wake conviction fanned into enthusiasm all aflame.
Yet, with all his efforts, despite a record of personal campaigning such as never before was seen in the recorded history of man, Mr. Bryan was defeated. The tremendous influence wielded by the great corporate interests, both by persuasion and by coercion, were such as no man and no idea could overcome.
The popular vote stood 7,107,822 for McKinley and 6,511,073 for Bryan. Of the electoral votes McKinley received 271 and Bryan 176, the solid South and almost solid West going Democratic, while every state north of the Ohio and east of the Mississippi went Republican.
Immediately after the result was assured Mr. Bryan telegraphed Mr. McKinley as follows: “Hon. Wm. McKinley, Canton, Ohio—Senator Jones has just informed me that the returns indicate your election, and I hasten to extend my congratulations. We have submitted the issue to the American people and their will is law.—W. J. Bryan.”
Mr. McKinley responded: “Hon. W. J. Bryan, Lincoln, Neb.—I acknowledge the receipt of your courteous message of congratulation with thanks, and beg you will receive my best wishes for your health and happiness.—William McKinley.”
While Mr. Bryan and his party accepted defeat thus gracefully, victory seemed to have redoubled the venom of the opposition. This post-election utterance of the New York Tribune, founded by Horace Greeley, and then and now edited by ex-Vice-President Whitelaw Reid, will serve to close this chapter in the same gentle spirit which marked the close of that memorable campaign:
“GOOD RIDDANCE
“There are some movements so base, some causes so depraved, that neither victory can justify them nor defeat entitle them to commiseration. Such a cause was that which was vanquished yesterday, by the favor of God and the ballots of the American people. While it was active and menacing, it was unsparingly denounced and revealed as what it was, in all its hideous deformity. Now that it is crushed out of the very semblance of being, there is no reason why such judgment of it should be revised. The thing was conceived in iniquity and was brought forth in sin. It had its origin in a malicious conspiracy against the honor and integrity of the nation. It gained such monstrous growth as it enjoyed from an assiduous culture of the basest passions of the least worthy members of the community. It has been defeated and destroyed, because right is right and God is God. Its nominal head was worthy of the cause. Nominal, because the wretched, rattle-pated boy, posing in vapid vanity and mouthing resounding rottenness, was not the real leader of that league of hell. He was only a puppet in the blood-imbued hands of Altgeld, the anarchist, and Debs, the revolutionist, and other desperados of that stripe. But he was a willing puppet, Bryan was, willing and eager. Not one of his masters was more apt at lies and forgeries and blasphemies and all the nameless iniquities of that campaign against the Ten Commandments. He goes down with the cause, and must abide with it in the history of infamy. He had less provocation than Benedict Arnold, less intellectual force than Aaron Burr, less manliness and courage than Jefferson Davis. He was the rival of them all in deliberate wickedness and treason to the Republic. His name belongs with theirs, neither the most brilliant nor the least hateful in the list.
“Good riddance to it all, to conspiracy and conspirators, and to the foul menace of repudiation and anarchy against the honor and life of the Republic. The people have dismissed it with no uncertain tones. Hereafter let there be whatever controversies men may please about the tariff, about the currency, about the Monroe doctrine, and all the rest. But let there never again be a proposition to repeal the moral law, to garble the Constitution, and to replace the Stars and Stripes with the red rag of anarchy. On those other topics honest men may honestly differ, in full loyalty to the Republic. On these latter there is no room for two opinions, save in the minds of traitors, knaves, and fools.”