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 offalling 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 YorkSun, 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?â€
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 commandingposition 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 OmahaWorld-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 theWorld-Heraldhe 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 spontaneoustribute 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 theignus 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.â€
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 withprofound 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.â€
SENATOR J. K. JONES
SENATOR J. K. JONES
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 theUnited 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 ClevelandLeadersaid:
“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.â€
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 YorkJournal—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 hurledanathema maranathaat 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 overwhich 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.â€
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, hisboldness, 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.â€
Mr. McKinley responded: “Hon. W. J. Bryan, Lincoln, Neb.—I acknowledge the receipt of your courteous message of congratulation with thanks, and begyou will receive my best wishes for your health and happiness.—William McKinley.â€
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 YorkTribune, 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
“GOOD RIDDANCE
“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 notthe 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.â€