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
The directness, simplicity, and purity of Mr. Bryan’s style as an orator
and the loftiness and beauty of his sentiment are well shown in the
appended excerpt from one of his Congressional speeches on “Money,” in
which occurs his famous apostrophe to Thomas Jefferson:
“There are wrongs to be righted; there are evils to be eradicated; there
is injustice to be removed; there is good to be secured for those who
toil and wait. In this fight for equal laws we can not fail, for right
is mighty and will in time triumph over all obstacles. Even if our eyes
do not behold success, we know that our labor is not in vain, and we can
lay down our weapons, happy in the promise given by Bryant to the
soldier:
‘Yea, though thou lie upon the dust,
When they who help thee flee in fear
Die full of hope and manly trust
Like those who fall in battle here.
Another hand by sword shall yield;
Another hand the standard wave;
Till from the trumpet’s mouth is pealed
The blast of triumph o’er the grave.’
“Let us, then, with the courage of Andrew Jackson, apply to present
conditions the principles taught by Thomas Jefferson—Thomas Jefferson,
the greatest constructive statesman whom the world has ever known; the
greatest warrior who ever battled for human liberty. He quarried from
the mountain of eternal truth the four pillars upon whose strength all
popular government must rest. In the Declaration of American
Independence, he proclaimed the principles with which there is, without
which there can not be, ‘a government of the people, by the people, and
for the people.’ When he declared that ‘all men are created equal; that
they are endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights; that
among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; that to
secure these rights governments are instituted among men, deriving their
just powers from the consent of the governed,’ he declared all that lies
between the alpha and omega of the Democracy.
“Alexander ‘wept for other worlds to conquer,’ after he had carried his
victorious banner throughout the then known world. Napoleon ‘rearranged
the map of Europe with his sword’ amid the lamentations of those by
whose blood he was exalted; but when these and other military heroes are
forgotten and their achievements disappear in the cycle’s sweep of
years, children will still lisp the name of Jefferson, and freedom will
ascribe due praise to him who filled the kneeling subject’s heart with
hope and bade him stand erect—a sovereign among his peers.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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