“To-day was fired the first gun of that great war which is to be waged during the next four months for the preservation of the Republic and the perpetuation of American institutions. And to-day, on a Democratic platform, addressing a Democratic convention, Webster Davis, Republican orator, statesman, and publicist, denounced in words of burning eloquence Republican abandonment of republican principles, and pledged his loyal and unswerving support to William J. Bryan. And on that same platform David B. Hill, Gold Democrat, stood before wildly cheering thousands, and announced a reunited Democracy.
“’Save the Republic,’ is to be the battle cry, the Declaration of Independence the party creed, ‘The Battle Hymn of the Republic’ the battle hymn, and the American flag the party emblem. And the leader, honest, unswerving, and undaunted, is to be the same gallant chieftain who breathed anew the breath of life into Democracy four years ago and marched it to glorious battle. Such, while the fire of patriotism burned fiercely in its heart, was the unanimous decision reached to-day by the Democratic National convention.
“As has been daily predicted in these dispatches, the Democratic party took no backward step on the question of finance.
“There is no attempt at quibbling, at subterfuge, or equivocation. Honesty and candor of the highest order live in this plank of the platform as they have their being in every other plank. There is not a line, a word, or a syllable capable of more than the one meaning; there are no omissions, no half statements, no dodgings of any question. The platform is in every sense worthy of the man—candid, bold, honest, and sincere even as he is candid, bold, honest, and sincere. Most wondrously were the schemes and machinations of the enemies of the Democratic party confounded. For on the single question on which the delegates were divided, as to whether there should be a specific demand for the free coinage of silver at the ratio of sixteen to one by this nation alone, the committee on resolutions brought in a unanimous report and the demand was boldly and specifically made. And the platform in which that demand was incorporated was adopted by the convention, not only with absolute unanimity, but amid the wildest, the most general, and most prolonged enthusiasm.
“In this unanimity spoke the love of every delegate for the Republic. It came because of a realizing sense that popular government and free institutions are in danger. And with that danger threatening, not a man in the convention but felt that all other differences must be buried while the party that founded and builded the Republic rallies to guard the sacred edifice from the vandal hands that are outstretched for its destruction. And thus it was that the great Democratic party reunited, north, south, east, and west clasping hands, love of country in every man’s heart and ‘save the Republic’ on each man’s lip, gave its platform and its candidate to the country.”
So Mr. Bryan won his greatest fight. It was a fight not only for principle and honesty, but for absolute candor and sincerity in dealing with any question before the American people. And, having won it, he was again the candidate for President of three political parties. For at Kansas City, at a convention held at the same time as the Democratic, the Silver Republican party, under the leadership of that pure and disinterested patriot, Charles A. Towne, had made Bryan and Stevenson, the Democratic nominees, its own nominees. And the Peoples’ party, at Sioux Falls, South Dakota, early in May had, in a spirit of noble self-sacrifice, gone outside its own party in its search for candidates, naming Mr. Bryan for President and Mr. Towne for Vice-President. Mr. Towne, believing that by so doing he could better further Mr. Bryan’s election, later withdrew from the ticket.
The Republican party met at Philadelphia in June, and renominated President McKinley, choosing as its Vice-Presidential candidate Governor Theodore Roosevelt of New York. The platform declared for the permanent retention of the Philippine Islands as property of the United States.
President McKinley, in his speech of acceptance, thus outlined his Philippine policy:
“There must be no scuttle policy. We will fulfil in the Philippines the obligations imposed by the triumph of our arms, by the treaty of peace, and by international law, by the nation’s sense of honor, and, more than all, by the rights, interests, and conditions of the Filipinos themselves.... The Philippines are ours, and American authority must be supreme throughout the archipelago.”
Those who find this declaration vague and unsatisfactory may well turn to Mr. Bryan’s great speech of acceptance delivered at Indianapolis on August 8, in which he makes this distinct pledge: