Then indeed, he lost out with level-headed men of all parties.
II.
Burdened with the record of his own instability, Bryan this year lost, practically, everything excepting the South. True, he got Nevada (two electoral votes,) and Colorado (five votes,) and Nebraska, (eight votes,) but this state he carried by making a piteous, tearful personal appeal,—and even then he got only a plurality, not a majority, and ran far behind the Democratic State ticket; but the West has repudiated him, just as the South and East have done.
It would not be worth while to dwell upon the humiliation of that political serfdom which kept the South in the Bryan column.
The South voted for Bryan, and is glad he wasn’t elected. Everybody, who knows anything, knows that. The fact ought to be able to penetrate the conceit of Bryan himself.
But is the fact important? It is, for its first consequence will be the elimination of Bryan, and its second will be the restoration of the South to her historic position in the Republic. It is the beginning of Southern self-assertion; the end of her political nullity.
Never again can Mr. Bryan hope to secure the support of the South. His record makes it impossible for her delegates to acquiesce in his nomination.
This being so, the Bryanites of other sections will recognize the folly of nominating him—for without the Solid South no Democrat can hope to win the Presidency.
When Bryan adopted that policy of Africanizing the Democratic party, he drove nails into his political coffin. The facts were not aired by the Southern papers during the campaign, but Bryan will hear from them when he bobs up serenely and goes after a fourth nomination. Ever since the Civil War, the Democratic party in the South has claimed to be the white man’s party. Because it was feared that a division of the whites into two parties would result in giving to the negroes the balance of power, the Southern people have allowed the Democracy of other sections to legislate against our interests, to ignore our industrial existence, to rob our producers under forms of law, to foist upon us candidates not of our choosing, and platforms which we detested.
The Democrats of other sections were permitted to treat us as though we belonged to them, because we feared to divide into two competitive white parties,—feared Negro Domination.