HARVEY E. NEWBRANCH. Lincoln, Neb., August 29, 1900. CONTENTS Introductory 5 Early Life 9 In Congress 19 The Tariff 30 The Rise of the Silver Issue 40 The Presidential Candidate 53 New Issues 68 Renomination 94 The Indianapolis Speech 114 Bryan: the Man 148 Home Life 164 INTRODUCTORY About the life and services of William Jennings Bryan will be centered the labors of those who, in future time, shall contribute to the pages of history the story of American states-craft and political tendencies of the dying days of the nineteenth century and the opening decade of the twentieth. The historian who has to do with Bryan and his times will deal not only with one of the most momentous and important periods of American history, but with one of the most remarkable and interesting characters whose name adorns its pages. It is not generally while the battle of ideas and ideals is on, it is but rarely during the developing period of great political and social movements, that their relative and ultimate importance may be judged; and it is as seldom, during the lifetime of a public man, whose name is identified and whose services are associated with the great issues which constitute the line of demarcation in the field of political thought, that his true character, his strength, and his weaknesses, may be appreciated or understood. In the study of man and of history a proper sense of perspective is as all-essential as in the limner’s art. The warrior who, with heart aflame, strives on a great battlefield, can know but little of the terrible grandeur of the whole, and still less of the import of the movements of battalions, regiments, and corps. It remains for him who, from an eminence of distance or of time, surveys impartially the entire field, to comprehend its sublimities and horrors, and to appreciate the full significance of its waging and its outcome. And even so, of necessity, it is most difficult for us who live in the American republic, at this century’s sunset, to be able or even willing rightly to appreciate the full import of movements in the advancement or retarding of which each bears howsoever humble a part. Too frequently in politics, as in battle, men do fiercely strive with blinded eyes and deafened ears, and they sometimes wildly strike at him who is their friend.