William Jennings Bryan: A Concise But Complete Story of His Life and ServicesNewbranch, Harvey Ellsworth
History
William Jennings Bryan: A Concise But Complete Story of His Life and Services
Newbranch, Harvey Ellsworth
Bryan, William Jennings, 1860-1925
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 the
United 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 Cleveland _Leader_ said:
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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