SOURCE: “William Jennings Bryan (1860-1925),” in The “Also Rans”: Great Men Who Missed Making the Presidential Goal, Books for Libraries Press, 1928, pp. 320-38.

From the days of Continental currency to the founding of the Federal Reserve Bank in 1915, the United States had been a fertile field for financial heresies. A fast growing country, with slow communications, limited credit, and a shortage of circulating medium, made it easily subject to financial distress. Of the “hard money” stock, silver was relatively scarcer than gold, with a varying value affected by the supply, which finally caused its demonitization—the celebrated “Crime of 1873.” Wildcat currency, and bank notes that were seldom tame, kept the country in monetary misery. When the government greenback was invented in 1862 it soon became so much below par as to imperil the finances of the nation. The government paid its bills with the paper, but would accept nothing but gold for its dues, with a resulting enhancement in the value of the yellow disks. The greenbacks were “legal tender” by mandate among men, but not in the Treasury Department.

Quite naturally people thought that when the government got on its feet financially the greenback should be as good as gold and acceptable for taxes. A test before the United States Supreme Court decided that it was not. As time passed the greenback had been steadily creeping toward par, the difference between it and the gold dollar being merely fractional. This was evidence to the Greenbackers that it was “good” and they persisted in their demand for more. It had been helped in value by the retirement of some $200,000,000 which was deemed to cramp the country. This was true, for it was growing and needed more currency, not less, in order to do business in comfort. The hard times of 1873 and later were credited to demonitization of silver and squeezing the water out the greenbacks. They were due instead to over-building of railroads and the crimping of credit by scared capital. The people however wanted the hair of the dog that had bitten them in war time. Legislation was first put through that provided for a flood of fiat currency. The steadfast President, U. S. Grant, vetoed it. Then there sprang up a Greenback Party determined to head off the return of specie payments. This was a disturbing factor for two decades, until merged into Populism in 1892, when the vote for J. B. Weaver, of Iowa, ran up to a million, captured twenty-two electoral votes, and drew enough support from the Republicans to place Grover Cleveland in the White House for a second term. Just as the election of James Buchanan in 1856 was supposed to have stilled the fires of Anti-Slavery, and Secession, so Cleveland's triumph was expected to put a quietus upon Populism. Instead it bred something worse.

The world's silver supply had been suddenly augmented in the late sixties by a discovery of vast deposits in Nevada, which such vigorous diggers as John W. Mackay, J. G. Fair and George Hearst, developed with much energy. It was found that the mercantile demand for the mineral could not consume its output and, following the American custom, the government was called upon to assist in absorbing the surplus. In 1878 therefore Congressman Richard P. Bland of Missouri, who had engaged in mining the metal, succeeded in passing a bill through the House calling for the “free and unlimited” coinage of 412[frac12] grain silver dollars, or at the rate of 15.62 to 1, for gold. Any person bringing metal to the mint could have it coined on this ratio. Senator William B. Allison, of Iowa, eliminated “free and unlimited” to the disgust of Bland, and provided that the government might buy not less than 2,000,000 or more than 4,000,000 ounces per month, but not to exceed investing more than $5,000,000, in bars. This was only a sop to silver, but it passed by a non-party vote. Allison saw that in effect the government would be buying all that was offered at 96 cents per ounce and soon go broke. Nobody wanted the cart-wheels after currency was redeemable in gold, January 1, 1879, and the mines stagnated. At the appeal of their owners in 1890, John Sherman put through an act requiring the purchase of 4,500,000, ounces of silver per month. There was no demand for it in coinage outside of fractional amounts and the metal piled up by the ton in the Treasury while good money went out steadily to pay for silver at twice its market value.

Some of it was salvaged by the issuance of one dollar “silver certificates,” which were of course, paper. They circulated at par and only served to further stagnate the stock of bullion in the Treasury.

When Mr. Cleveland came into power in 1893, it was discovered that the country's gold reserve had well-nigh disappeared, no one knew where. Then the wise found that we had been exchanging useful gold for useless silver and that the yellow boys had rolled away. Semi-panic ensued. The richest government in the world had to sell $100,000,000 in bonds to restore its gold reserve. It had previously sold $64,000,000 worth which did not last long, for the same purpose.

Mr. Cleveland set to work and secured the repeal of the Sherman Act to the immediate relief of the Treasury, but to the deep distress of the silver miners. These now sought legislation that would permit the free coinage of silver at a sixteen to one ratio. That is as under Bland's plan, producers of the metal could take it to the mint, have it coined, and less seignorage, turn it loose upon the country in dollars. The government would not buy it in this circumstance, but the people would. That at least was the theory. Silver had however dropped from its high estate of 96 cents per ounce to 46 cents. The stamp of the government had held up its lost value in currency form. This would vanish with free coinage.

In 1896 the silver miners set about seriously to save themselves. They had to capture an administration. The Republicans met first at St. Louis where they nominated William McKinley, of Ohio. He had been a silver man. The American Bankers' Association through its agent Oscar E. Leach, cashier of the National Union Bank of New York, supplied Thomas C. Platt, the Republican boss of the State, with funds, which enabled him to secure the insertion of a gold plank in the platform. So the baffled silver men, under the leadership of Marcus Daly, head of the Anaconda Mine, turned their energies toward the Democracy. They knew that parties did not invent issues, but that issues could capture parties.

There had come into Congress from Lincoln, Nebraska, in 1891, a gifted young man named William Jennings Bryan, who speedily became known as “The Boy Orator of the Platte.” This he was by adoption having been born at Salem, Illinois, March 19, 1860. He graduated from Illinois college with high honors in 1881, becoming valedictorian of his class. Studying law, at Union College, Chicago, he was admitted to the bar in 1883, and hung out his shingle at Jacksonville, the old home of Stephen A. Douglas.

The next year he married Mary Elizabeth Baird, a charming and accomplished fellow-student and in 1887 shifted his sign to Lincoln. Here he got on, and whence he was sent to Congress where he served two terms, ending in 1895. Toward the close of his service he became editor of the Omaha World-Herald. He had formed the habit of attending national conventions covering a number of them, and was present at the nomination of McKinley, representing the World-Herald. He had been nominated for senator several times in Nebraska and though but thirty-six, knew politics and how to touch popular chords. Of robust and pleasing appearance he had a real gift for oratory, sonorous voice and unlimited endurance. He had the face such as people like to note in statemen—a broad, high brow, wide between the ears, a compelling eye, firm chin and mouth and the sort of nose Napoleon Bonaparte admired. He spoke with passion and could be plainly heard on the back seats. Moreover he was a Presbyterian and believed that God had created man in His Own Image. His heart warmed for the people and he made their wrongs his own—that is to say the plain folks of the West. There was no place in his cardiac region for the grasping capitalist of the East who sold money as a business and had coagulated it into what he called a “trust” that sweated the dollar of the agriculturist until it became thin as a wafer.

Just as Solon Chase, of Maine, a famous Greenbacker, had shouted for “more hog in the dollar” so Mr. Bryan wanted more dollars for the hog-raisers. How the undoubtedly mistreated farmer was to get the dollars never entered his calculations.

As Sulla, the Tyrant, contemplating the young Julius Cæsar “saw many a Marius in this dissolute youth,” so the silver men perceived a possibility in the eloquent young Nebraskan and shifted their persuasive forces from St. Louis to Chicago, where the Democrats were assembling to name a successor for Mr. Cleveland. A seat as a delegate from Nebraska had been secured for Mr. Bryan, and the ways had been carefully greased for launching him as a candidate.

Through fusions with the Populists in the West the convention was liberally stocked with Wild Asses Colts. The silver men had small difficulty in saddling them, the hostler being this self-same Boy Orator of the Platte. Well surcharged with silver, he came laden with a plank for the platform that declared for free coinage. Peppered with populism there had never been quite such a Democratic Convention before. Fusion had brought in so much queer company that old timers looked askant upon the scene and wondered at the outcome. David B. Hill, of New York, Anti-Cleveland, but sound in sense, sat gloomily by while the wild people worked their will. He had come West in the hope of becoming the standard-bearer, but could not discover a gleam of hope, so securely did the populists and silverites control.

Colonel Charles H. Jones, editor of Joseph Pulitzer's St. Louis Post-Dispatch, had brought a platform already written, containing his celebrated “Government by Injunction” clause which had caused his exile from the editorial charge of the New York World to Missouri. He cheerfully accepted Mr. Bryan's equally ready-made silver plank. When the show began the latter was “duly surprised” at being asked by Senator John P. Jones, of Nevada, to take charge of presenting the free silver side. He had aspired to this duty, but felt it belonged to Jones, and had raised his eyes to the chairmanship of the convention, but “having passed through a circle of disappointments I found myself in the very position for which I had at first longed.” He went to Jones after the convention in sweet innocence to learn how he had been selected for the honor, to find out from that solemn wag that “he knew of the part I had taken in organizing the fight.” He did indeed, having helped to pay for it.

Describing what followed Mr. Bryan notes in his Autobiography: “I had spoken long enough to know that, comparing myself with myself, I was more effective in a brief speech in conclusion than a longer speech that simply laid down propositions for another to follow For some reason—I do not now recall what the reason was—the debate on the platform was put over until the next day and I had time to think over my speech during the night and to arrange my arguments in so far as one can arrange arguments for a closing speech. I fitted my definition of the business man at the place that I thought best and kept my ‘cross of gold and crown of thorns’ for the conclusion.”

Never, he felt, had there been a better setting for a speech. The Republican Convention “had declared for the maintenance of the gold standard only until it was possible to restore bi-metallism by international agreement, and the platform pledged the party to an effort to secure international bi-metallism.”

Hill, William F. Vilas of Wisconsin, and Governor W. E. Russell of Massachusetts had “provoked” and “irritated” the delegates by their stand for honest money. These were now ready for Bryan. He confesses naïvely that he “was prepared to answer in an extemporaneous speech the arguments which had been presented—that is extemporaneous so far as its arrangement was concerned.”

Satisfied with the situation and himself he felt “as composed as if I had been speaking to a small audience on an unimportant occasion. From the first sentence the audience was with me. My voice reached to the uttermost parts of the hall, which is a great advantage in speaking to an audience like that.”

There was another advantage—arranged as carefully as his speech: “The audience acted like a trained choir—in fact I thought of a choir as I noted how instantaneously and in unison they responded to each point as made.”

Thus it was that what appeared like a spontaneous outburst on the part of speaker and audience came to pass. The peroration that thrilled had been carefully rehearsed. It came forth flaming in this form:

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; and upon that issue we expect to carry every state in the Union. I shall not slander the fair state of Massachusetts nor the inhabitants of the State of New York by saying, that, when they are confronted with the proposition they will declare that this nation is not able to attend to its own business. It is the issue of 1776 over again. Our ancestors who were but three million 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 we are less independent than our forefathers? No, my friends, that will never be the verdict of the people. Therefore we care not upon what field the battle is fought. If they say bi-metallism is good, but that we cannot have it until other nations help us, we reply that, instead of having a gold standard because England has, we will restore bi-metallism, and then let England have bi-metallism because the United States has it. If they decide to come out into 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 common interests, the laboring interests, 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!”

Hardly up to “Give me liberty or give me death” but it produced a prodigious furore. Men tore banners from the walls and waved them in furious excitement. The applause thundered in hurricanes. When the convention had accepted the platform, with a final howl it adjourned to nominate on the next day. J. P. Bland, the original silver man received 235 votes on the first ballot, Bryan 119, Governor Robert E. Pattison, of Pennsylvania, 95, J. S. C. Blackburn, of Kentucky 83, Governor Horace Boies of Iowa, 85. The rest of the delegates scattered. Out of the total 178 did not vote at all. They saved themselves by arrangement, for Bryan. When the fifth ballot was announced he had 500 votes and needed 512. These were given him at once by changes. Arthur Sewell, a rich ship builder, of Bath, Maine, was named for Vice-President. Then the delegates went home.

Bryan took the stump and made a wonderful canvass. He stirred and scared the country. Money bags grew weak in the knees at his exuberant progress. Enormous crowds heard and acclaimed him everywhere. Business men were in a near panic, artfully encouraged by Marcus A. Hanna, of Cleveland, who had brought about the nomination of McKinley. Thomas C. Platt collected great funds in New York. All over the country men of money contributed heavily to save the gold standard and the Republican Party so lately converted to its merits. In addition a Democratic bolt was contrived, the venerable John M. Palmer, of Illinois, being placed at its head and General Simon Bolivar Buckner, of Kentucky on the tail. The Populists put Thomas E. Watson of Georgia, in the field.

No newspaper of much account except the St. Louis Post-Dispatch which Mr. Pulitzer could not control under his contract with Colonel Jones, supported Bryan. Mr. Pulitzer's New York World was especially vigorous in the negative. Bryan travelled 18,000 miles making unnumbered speeches, but was beaten with 176 electoral votes to 271 for McKinley. On the popular vote McKinley polled 7,104,779, Bryan 6,502,925, a Republican lead of 601,854. This looks like a large margin, yet in the balancing of the electors, a change of 25,000 ballots, properly distributed, would have carried the college and elected Bryan.

The country rejoiced in the victory and thought itself safe from silver. It was, but not from Bryan. He kept in the field. When the needless Spanish War was unloaded on the Administration, Mr. Bryan straightway offered his services to President McKinley, who was not polite enough to reply. So Mr. Bryan enlisted as a private in a militia company at Lincoln, pending a hope that he might get on Major-General Joseph Wheeler's staff, which was not possible while uncommissioned and without military experience. Accordingly Governor Silas A. Holcomb, of Nebraska, authorized him to raise a regiment which he did, riding at its head as Colonel. He looked well in a uniform but had not the luck of Theodore Roosevelt to reach Cuba. His command was kept five months in Florida. No Democratic military records were desired while those of Republicans were so thin.

Bryan resigned the day peace was declared and went back to Nebraska. He did not subside, however, but picked up imperialism as an issue, growing out of America's acquisition of Porto Rico and the Philippines. This he made his shibboleth, much encouraged by Joseph Pulitzer who was glad to get back into Democratic company, though the World would not swallow Bryan and silver. When the Democrats met at Kansas City July 5, 1900, Mr. Bryan did not for once attend. His friend R. L. Metcalfe of the World-Herald was among those present, however, at the head of the delegation and attended to his nomination which came by acclamation. Imperialism was made the battle cry, and an effort to drop silver caused some choking, Bryan insisting that the Chicago silver plank be reaffirmed. This was done but it made small stir in the campaign. Colonel Jones again indited the platform, still holding Mr. Pulitzer in defiance. Adlai E. Stephenson, the axe-wielder in Mr. Cleveland's administration was selected as vice-president. Defeat was their portion. This time Bryan had 155 electoral votes to 292 for the renominated McKinley, whose popular majority was 849,790.

He took himself out of the race in 1904, when at St. Louis William Randolph Hearst, of California and New York, came close to capturing the nomination, but was defeated by Judge Alton B. Parker, head of the New York Court of Appeals. Mr. Bryan attended and sought to keep silver in the platform. He did not succeed, but wrote much of the rest of it. David B. Hill ran the show and put over Parker, who came out for gold. The Judge was a comely man but not nationally known. Mr. Pulitzer had recaptured the Post-Dispatch from Colonel Jones and it, together with the New York World rejoiced in the “Passing of Bryan.” He did not go very far away, having in 1900 established the weekly Commoner, at Lincoln, which had 100,000 circulation, out of which he made money and through which he was heard from. Parker was badly beaten by the redoubtable Theodore Roosevelt, the electoral vote standing 336 to 140, with a popular majority of 2,545,515.

Saying “I told you so” Bryan fixed his fences for 1908 when William H. Taft received the Republican nomination by inheritance from his predecessor, whose war secretary he had been, in the expectation that he would give it back at the end of four years. This time the World and Post-Dispatch accepted Bryan, but he was again defeated, the electoral vote standing 321 to 172, and abandoned Presidential ambition thereafter, to become a star on the Chautauqua circuit taking “The Prince of Peace” as his chief topic. He was very popular and succeeded in this field. He did not, however, forego his habit of attending conventions, being present at the 1912 Republican and Bull Moose gatherings at Chicago, as reporter for a newspaper syndicate. The split made the Democratic nomination a prize-package. Mr. Bryan attended the Democratic convention at Baltimore in the dual capacity of correspondent and delegate from Nebraska, instructed to vote for Champ Clark, of Missouri, Speaker of the House. Clark was popular in the West and South. Colonel E. M. House, J. P. McCombs and William G. McAdoo had put themselves behind Woodrow Wilson. There was a stiff contest. Bryan voted for Clark so long as the New York delegation was against him. When Charles F. Murphy, the Tammany Boss ordered them to support Clark on the tenth ballot, Mr. Bryan turned to Wilson on a resolution to the effect that no Morgan-Ryan-Belmont-Tammany combination could be permitted to put a President in the White House. He stuck to Wilson until he won out.

Whether because of gratitude or pre-arrangement through Wilson's clever management, when victory followed the Republican dissensions, the new President named Mr. Bryan Secretary of State. This he accepted. The place was not pleasant, the self-centered Wilson regarding his cabinet members rather as appendages to him than as factors of his administration. Mr. Bryan frequently found himself wandering in the dark with a hostile press ever striving to make him appear ridiculous. The Austrian Ambassador Dumba made a statement public credited to Bryan that the American protest on the sinking of the Lusitania was not to be considered seriously. The Secretary, replying to Dumba's query as to why the Lusitania incident had any different aspect than the holding up of our ships bound for Hamburgh and Kiel, had answered that taking lives and merchandise were different things. So thoroughly misrepresented was Mr. Bryan, and kept so much in ignorance by Mr. Wilson that he found himself ineffective in the European situation developed by the war. The President was running diplomacy himself with Colonel E. M. House as his confidential agent. Walter H. Page, ambassador to Great Britain was operating on a line of his own quite apart from Wilson and Bryan. Between criticism and confusion Mr. Bryan gave it up. He resigned on June 8, 1915. Mr. Wilson accepted “with a feeling of personal sorrow,” adding, “our two years of association have been delightful to me.” The immediate cause of his quitting was because he declined to sign the second impotent note to Germany. Its Foreign Office had suggested arbitration. This Bryan thought should have been considered. Instead the situation was left in the air to come down in armed conflict. Robert Lansing took his place in the cabinet, to be kicked out more ignominiously than any man who had ever held high office in the United States. Even Jackson sent his ministers into retirement politely.

In 1924 Mr. Bryan attended his last convention, this time as a delegate from Florida, where he had become a citizen. He was again in “the enemy's country” as he had called it in 1896. The freshness had gone from his voice and his eye had lost its command. The following behind Governor Alfred E. Smith of New York, wanted to push through an Anti-Klan resolution. Mr. Bryan did not object to a declaration against intolerance but he did oppose mentioning the Klan by name. On a close vote he had his way.

Also, his brother Charles W. was nominated for Vice-President. This was the end of Mr. Bryan's remarkable career in American politics.

He had held the record for attempts at gaining the Chief Magistracy: three times before the people, to be as many times rejected. Yet he had not failed as a man of mark. For one thing the despised dollar of our daddies became worth more than a hundred cents during the war period. After the World War the Nations exerted themselves to establish some form of eternal peace on earth and good-will among men, which had replaced sixteen to one in Mr. Bryan's vocabulary. This under way, he took on the engineering of nationwide prohibition. Nothing looked less possible. The National Prohibition Party had never done better than 300,000 or so at the polls and was a political joke, just as the abolition party was before it, which could never register more than a quarter of a million followers. But abolition prevailed through blood, and prohibition carried in the emotional aftermath of war.

Mr. Bryan became financially interested in Florida. He had shifted his residence from Lincoln to Miami, after his retirement from the Department of State, establishing himself in a pleasant home that he called Villa Serena. He became an appanage of the boom, establishing a Bible Class that soon became too big for the Presbyterian Church and had to move outdoors, locating in a park on the shore of Biscayne Bay. Here five thousand people would gather each Sunday to hear him expound the lesson. Between times he did some talking for Florida in the interest of the real estate exploitation. The Young Men's Christian Association sent him across the continent through Canada, to organize new bodies in its name. He was very successful at this. Never familiar, he had a warm hand when grasped and an imposing personality, while his speech, if not profound was fervid and his appeals stirred up the good in men. He could not rouse “the boys” or the pot-house politicians but he certainly united the god-fearing.

Religion crowded his closing years. He was unceasing in his exertions and kept as busy as a Prince of Wales, laying corner stones, dedicating churches and aiding drives for raising funds. To this he gave time and strength without stint, to the exhaustion of the latter. His splendid physique seemed equal to any strain, but as the event proved it was not.

The State of Tennessee put a law on its statute books forbidding the teaching of evolution in public schools. Some ingenious young gentleman in the modest town of Dayton conceived the brilliant idea of putting the place on the map by the device of testing the act. John J. Scopes, a teacher in the public school was therefore taken to account for explaining Darwin to his class in biology. Hicks and Hicks, hitherto unheard-of counsellors at law, undertook the prosecution in May, 1925. With the consent of the County Judge and the Attorney General they invited Mr. Bryan to take part in the case on the side of the law. The question at issue was wholly legal, but it was made to take on an aspect of bigotry. Of course Mr. Bryan's participation gave it nation-wide interest, though as Mrs. Bryan sensibly observes in writing of her husband: “The truth or lack of truth in the theory of evolution were out of place.” She evidently disapproved of the fuss. The press and public, however, did not hold this view. Neither did Mr. Bryan.

The bones of Darwin were well rattled during the course of the trial while Mr. Bryan was placed in a class with the Inquisitors of the Holy Office. Times were dull—it was summer—and the trial received vast space in the newspapers. Dayton was suffocatingly hot; jammed with correspondents and the curious. Mr. Bryan worked unceasingly, giving neither his mind or body rest. He was the whole show. Clarence A. Darrow, defendant's counsel, figured small. Scopes was found guilty, while Mr. Bryan was hailed as the “Defender of the Faith.”

But the trial had told on him. He consulted a doctor, who found his blood pressure normal, heart action good and his general condition satisfactory. The day after this verdict, he retired as usual to take his afternoon nap. Mrs. Bryan sent up to awaken him. The messenger came back to report that he was sleeping so peacefully it seemed a pity to rouse him. Mrs. Bryan was herself invalided, confined to a wheel chair. She felt uneasy and again sent the man up to raise the windows and see if Mr. Bryan was really asleep. He came back reporting: “Something is wrong. I cannot wake him.” Indeed something was wrong. The Prince of Peace was dead. This was July 26, 1925.

As an echo of his five months with the Nebraska regiment in Florida, he had desired to be buried in the American Valhalla at Arlington. This was done. So the Prince of Peace sleeps on a field of Mars. Inconsistencies never bothered him. Why quarrel with this?

It is difficult to sum him up. He was a born exhorter and evangelist both in and out of politics. The latter is usually deemed the delight of the unregenerate. Mr. Bryan made politics pious. He was a good man in the trite sense. Right living had been his habit from the beginning. He was thrifty and left a fortune estimated at $750,000, made partly by the rise in Florida real estate, the rest earned on the platform. Few men got close up to him, but those who came into considerable contact liked him. Grim old E. W. Howe of Atchison, Kansas, came to hold him in high regard as they foregathered at Miami. Joseph A. Altsheler, the World correspondent who accompanied him during the strenuous 1896 campaign liked him much and wrote a novel The Candidate depicting his traits. He had always to be serving something. That is a characteristic of the evangel.

Were his accomplishments beneficial to any but himself? The negative would be a fair reply. His silver fallacy gave rise to political and economic confusion on a large scale. More than this his aimless persistence in politics destroyed opposition in the United States. The strenuous Roosevelt could always outdo him. To compete was to become absurd. That Bryan never was. The party of Jefferson lost force and purpose under his demoralizing domination. It did not want him, but he wanted it and had it to his fill. The party has never rallied from the effects of Bryanism. The country has yet to create an intelligent and effective competition with the Republican Party. Roosevelt made the Republicans ineffective against Wilson. Wilson left his party on the rocks. Bryan would have kept out of the war at all hazards. He believed in his principles so long as they interested him. But he was never a Jeffersonian or a Jacksonian. He was William Jennings Bryan, Traveller upon Tides.