The fight for free silver was carried by the silver state delegations to the floor of the convention, where it was defeated by a vote of 818-1/2 to 105-1/2. At this point, led by Senators from Colorado and Utah, thirty-four members withdrew from the convention in protest. Even the Prohibition party had already been broken by the new issue. The humorous weekly, Life, spoke seriously when it declared that "The two great parties in the country at this writing are the Gold party and the Silver party. The old parties are in temporary eclipse." Few were satisfied with the Republican result, for while the platform pointed one way and the candidate's career pointed the other on free silver, the real interest of the party, protection, aroused no enthusiasm.
No Democrat was the predetermined candidate of his party when it met at Chicago in July, 1896. Cleveland, least of all, was not given even the scanty notice of a commendatory plank. He stood alone as no other President had done, at issue with the Republicans on their major policy, yet without followers in his own organization. Slow, patient, courageous, stubborn, he had twice held his party to its promise, and he had refused to be carried away by the transitory demand of the West for dangerous finance. He had guided the National Administration through eight years of expansion and reorganization, and had been a devoted servant of civil service reform. In May, 1896, he had aggravated his offenses in the eyes of the politicians by issuing new rules that extended the classified service to include some 31,000 new employees, making a total of 86,000 out of 178,000 federal employees. He passed out of party politics at least two years before his term expired, and in 1897 he took up his final abode in Princeton. From Princeton he wrote and spoke for eleven years, and before he died in 1908 the animosities of 1896 were forgotten, and he looked large in the American mind as a statesman whose independence and sincerity were beyond reproach.
Forces beyond the control of politicians carried the Democrats toward an alliance with Populism and free silver. As two minority parties they had felt in 1892 a tendency to fuse against the Republicans. By conviction they were both obliged to fight the party of Hanna and McKinley, in which the forces of business, finance, and manufacture were assembled in the joint cause of protection and the gold standard. It was convenient to make this fight in close alliance, the more so because the Populist doctrine of free silver had permeated the Democratic organization in the West and South. In the conventions of 1896 more than thirty States, as Nebraska had done in 1894, asked for immediate free coinage, and a majority of the Democratic delegates were pledged to this before they came to Chicago. They gained control of the convention on the first vote, determined contests in their own favor, and offered a plank demanding "the free and unlimited coinage of both silver and gold at the present legal ratio of sixteen to one without waiting for the aid or consent of any other nation."
The debate on the silver plank was long and bitter, although its passage was certain. It was closed by the leader of the Nebraska delegation, William Jennings Bryan, who had been a former Congressman, and who later said, "An opportunity to close such a debate had never come to me before, and I doubt if as good an opportunity had ever come to any other person during this generation." He took advantage of the moment, in a tired convention that had been wrangling in bitterness for several days, that had deserted the old politicians, and that had no candidate. He was only thirty-six years old, his face was unfamiliar, and his name had rarely been heard outside his State, but he had been preaching free silver with religious intensity and oratorical skill. His speech had grown through repeated speaking, and reached its climax as he pleaded for free silver: "If they dare to 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 interests, and the toilers everywhere, we will answer their demand for the 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." Swept off its feet by the enthusiasm for silver, and having no other candidate in view, the convention nominated Bryan on the fifth ballot, selecting Arthur Sewall, of Maine, as his companion.
The Populists met in St. Louis on July 22. "If we fuse, we are sunk," complained one of the most devoted leaders; "if we don't fuse, all the silver men will leave us for the more powerful Democrats." Fusion controlled the convention, voting down the "Middle-of-the-Road" group that adhered to independence. Bryan was nominated, although Sewall was rejected for Thomas E. Watson, of Georgia. The organization of the People's Party continued after 1896, but its vitality was gone forever.
The campaign of 1896 was an orgy of education, emotion, and panic. McKinley was driven by the opposition to defend the gold standard with increasing intensity. Protection ceased to arouse interest and other issues were forgotten. The Bryan party attracted to itself the silver wings of the Republicans and Prohibitionists, and absorbed the Populists. The gold Democrats, after several weeks of indecision as to tactics, became bolters, held a convention at Indianapolis in September, and nominated John M. Palmer and Simon Buckner. To this ticket, Cleveland and his Cabinet gave their support. Up and down the land Bryan traveled, preaching his new gospel, which millions regarded as "the first great protest of the American people against monopoly—the first great struggle of the masses in our country against the privileged classes." "Probably no man in civil life," said the Nation at the end of the fight, "has succeeded in inspiring so much terror without taking life."
As chairman of the National Committee, Marcus A. Hanna directed the Republican campaign. He encouraged the belief that Bryan was waging a "campaign against the Ten Commandments." He drew his sinews of war from the manufacturers, who were used to such demands, and from a wide range of panic-stricken contributors who feared repudiation. Insurance companies and national banks were assessed and paid with alacrity. The funds went into the broadest campaign of education that the United States had seen.
In contrast to the activity of Bryan, McKinley stayed at home through the summer, and delegations from afar were brought up to his veranda at Canton, Ohio. To these he spoke briefly and with dignity, gaining an assurance that grew with the campaign. His arguments were taken over the country by a horde of speakers whom Hanna organized, who reached and educated every voter whose mind was open on the silver question. In the closing days of the campaign panic struck the conservative classes and produced for Hanna campaign funds such as had never been seen, and cries of corruption met the charges of repudiation.
An English visitor in New York wrote on the Sunday before election: "Of course nothing can be done till Wednesday. All America is aflame with excitement—and New York itself is at fever heat. I have never seen such a sight as yesterday. The whole city was a mass of flags and innumerable Republican and Democratic insignia—with the streets thronged with over two million people. The whole business quarter made a gigantic parade that took seven hours in its passage—and the business men alone amounted to over 100,000. Every one—as, indeed, not only America, but Great Britain and all Europe—is now looking eagerly for the final word on Tuesday night. The larger issues are now clearer: not merely that the Bryanite fifty-cent dollar (instead of the standard hundred-cent) would have far-reaching disastrous effects, but that the whole struggle is one of the anarchic and destructive against the organic and constructive forces."
The vote was taken in forty-five States, Utah having been admitted early in 1896, and no election had evoked a larger proportion of the possible vote. Bryan received 6,500,000 votes, nearly a million more than any elected President had ever received, but he ran 600,000 votes behind McKinley. The Republican list included every State north of Virginia and Tennessee, and east of the Missouri River, except Missouri and South Dakota. The solid South was confronted by a solid North and East, while the West was divided. McKinley received 271 electoral votes; Bryan, 176.