Free Silver was an important United States political policy issue in the late 19th century and early 20th century. Its advocates were in favor of an inflationary monetary policy using the "free coinage of silver"; its supporters were called "Silverites". It largely pitted the financial establishment of the Northeast, who were creditors and would be hurt by inflation, against the more rural areas of the country, who were debtors and would benefit from inflation: farmers in the Midwest, miners in the West, and Southerners still chafing against federal government control.

The debate lasted from the Coinage Act of 1873, which demonetized silver, to the Federal Reserve Act of 1913, which radically overhauled the US monetary system, coming to a head in the presidential election of 1896, most memorably in the Cross of Gold speech. Throughout, Free Silver was consistently defeated. While the Free Silver movement ended, debates about inflation and monetary policy continue to this day.

Definitions and explanation

To understand exactly what is meant by "free coinage of silver", it is necessary to understand the way mints operated in the days of the gold standard. Essentially, anyone who possessed uncoined gold, such as successful prospectors, or those to whom they might have sold it, could bring it to one of the United States Mints and trade it for its equivalent in gold coins, less a small deduction for seignorage. Free silver advocates wanted the mints to accept silver on the same principle, so that anyone would be able to deposit silver bullion at a Mint and in return receive nearly its weight in silver dollars and other currency.

Through most of the years when silver dollars and smaller denominations were minted in actual silver, the melt value of the silver was substantially less than their face value. As a result, their monetary value was based on government fiat rather than on the commodity value of their contents, and this became especially true following the huge silver strikes in the West, which further depressed the silver price. From that time until the early 1960s the silver in United States dimes, quarters, halves, and silver dollars was worth only a fraction of their face values.

Response

Many populist and radical organizations favored a very inflationary monetary policy on the grounds that it enabled debtors (often farmers, laborers, and industrial workers) to pay their debts off with cheaper, more readily-available dollars; those who suffered under this policy were the creditors such as banks, leaseholders, and landlords, who under this theory could well afford any loss this caused them. Other supporters obviously included silver miners and those who supplied them, territorial and state governments in silver-producing areas, and other interests who desired to see gold demonetarized or at least reduced in prominence, including many Southerners.

For the most part, the Republican Party steadfastly opposed Free Silver, arguing that the best road to national prosperity was "sound money," a policy of attempting to maintain or even increase the dollar's value, as this rewarded those who had accumulated wealth and provided them with a strong incentive to produce and accumulate even more, which they saw as the engine driving economic growth. In 1896, some pro-Free Silver Republicans from western states split from the main Republican Party to form the short-lived Silver Republican Party.

The Sherman Silver Purchase Act of 1890, while falling short of Free Silver's goals, required the U.S. government to buy millions of ounces of silver (driving up the price of the metal and pleasing silver miners) for money (pleasing farmers and many others). Once he regained power, and after the Panic of 1893 had begun, Grover Cleveland engineered the repeal of the Act, setting the stage for the key issue of the next presidential election.

Climax

The Populist Party had a strong Free Silver element. Its subsequent combination with the Democratic Party moved the latter from the support of the gold standard which had been the hallmark of the Cleveland administration to the Free Silver position epitomized by 1896 presidential nominee William Jennings Bryan in his Cross of Gold speech. Bryan's 1896 candidacy was supported by Populists and Silver Republicans as well as Democrats.

The issue was over what would back the US currency. The two options were: ''gold'' (wanted by the Goldbugs and William McKinley) and ''silver'' (wanted by the Silverites and Bryan). Unbacked ''paper'' (wanted by the Greenbacks) represented a third option. Free Silver was a political movement for "Pro Silver".

Result

Largely as a result of the support of monied interests which gave the Republicans an unmatchable campaign war chest, the Democrats failed to win any presidential elections in which the Free Silver issue was paramount. The presidency of the next Democrat to win the office, Woodrow Wilson in 1912, ushered in monetary reform of a very different sort, through the creation of the Federal Reserve Banking system in 1913. Free Silver thus ceased to be a major issue, although its influence could perhaps be seen 20 years after the creation of the Federal Reserve in President Franklin D. Roosevelt's devaluation of the dollar (fixing the value of gold at $35 per troy ounce rather than $20 per troy ounce) and (partial) abandonment of the gold standard and ban against private ownership of gold coins and bullion, adopted in 1933 and spun as a measure intended to counter the Great Depression.

Symbolism of Free Silver

Silver became increasingly associated with populism and was referred to the "People's Money" (as opposed to gold-based currency, which was portrayed by inflationists as the money of "exploitation" and "oppression"). Around the time of the Panic of 1893, William H. Harbey's popular pamphlet Coin's Financial School illustrated the "restorative" properties of silver; through devaluation of the currency, closed factories would reopen, darkened furnaces would be relit, et cetera.

See also

Alexander del Mar

Bimetallism

Silver Party

References

American History, Alan brinkley. Chapter 19

Category:Economic history of the United States Category:Economic ideologies Category:Silver

Coordinates	35°0′41.69″N135°46′5.47″N
name	William Jennings Bryan
office	United States Secretary of State
order	41st
term start	March 5, 1913
term end	June 9, 1915
president	Woodrow Wilson
deputy	Huntington Wilson (1913)John E. Osborne (1913–1915)
predecessor	Philander C. Knox
successor	Robert Lansing
state5	Nebraska
district5	1st
term start5	March 4, 1891
term end5	March 3, 1895
predecessor5	William James Connell
successor5	Jesse Burr Strode
birth date	March 19, 1860
birth place	Salem, Illinois
death date	July 26, 1925
death place	Dayton, Tennessee
party	Democratic
spouse	Mary Baird Bryan
children	Ruth Bryan Owen, William Jennings Bryan Jr., Grace Bryan
alma mater	Illinois College, Union College of Law
profession	Politician, Lawyer, Militia Colonel
religion	Presbyterian
signature	WJ Bryan Signature.svg }}

William Jennings Bryan (March 19, 1860 – July 26, 1925) was an American politician in the late-19th and early-20th centuries. He was a dominant force in the liberal wing of the Democratic Party, standing three times as its candidate for President of the United States (1896, 1900 and 1908). He served in the United States Congress briefly as a Representative from Nebraska and was the 41st United States Secretary of State under President Woodrow Wilson, 1913–1916. Bryan was a devout Presbyterian, a supporter of popular democracy, an enemy of gold, banks and railroads, a leader of the silverite movement in the 1890s, a peace advocate, a prohibitionist, and an opponent of Darwinism on religious grounds. With his deep, commanding voice and wide travels, he was one of the best known orators and lecturers of the era. Because of his faith in the goodness and rightness of the common people, he was called "The Great Commoner."

In the intensely fought 1896 and 1900 elections, he was defeated by William McKinley but retained control of the Democratic Party. With over 500 speeches in 1896, Bryan invented the national stumping tour, in an era when other presidential candidates stayed home. In his three presidential bids, he promoted Free Silver in 1896, anti-imperialism in 1900, and trust-busting in 1908, calling on Democrats to fight the trusts (big corporations) and big banks, and embrace anti-elitist ideals of republicanism. President Wilson appointed him Secretary of State in 1913, but Wilson's strong demands on Germany after the ''Lusitania'' was torpedoed in 1915 caused Bryan to resign in protest.

After 1920 he was a strong supporter of Prohibition and energetically attacked Darwinism and evolution, most famously at the Scopes Trial in 1925. Five days after Bryan had won the case, he died in his sleep.

Background and early career: 1860–1896

William Jennings Bryan was born in Salem, Illinois on March 19, 1860, to Silas Lillard Bryan and Mariah Elizabeth (Jennings) Bryan.

Bryan's mother was of English heritage. Mary Bryan joined the Salem Baptists in 1872, so Bryan attended Methodist services on Sunday morning, and in the afternoon, Baptist services. At this point, William began spending his Sunday afternoons at the Cumberland Presbyterian Church. At age 14, Bryan attended a revival, was baptized, and joined the Cumberland Presbyterian Church. In later life, Bryan said the day of his baptism was the most important day in his life, but at the time it caused little change in his daily routine. He left the Cumberland Presbyterian Church and joined the larger Presbyterian Church in the United States of America.

His father Silas, of Scotch-Irish and English stock, was an avid Jacksonian Democrat. Silas won election to the Illinois State Senate, but was defeated for re-election in 1860. He did win election as a state circuit judge, and moved to a farm north of Salem in 1866, living in a ten-room house that was the envy of Marion County.

Until age ten, Bryan was home-schooled, finding in the Bible and McGuffey Readers support for his views that gambling and liquor were evil and sinful. To attend Whipple Academy, which was attached to Illinois College, Bryan was sent to Jacksonville, Illinois in 1874.

Following high school, he entered Illinois College, graduating as valedictorian in 1881. During his time at Illinois College, Bryan was a member of the Sigma Pi literary society. He studied law at Union Law College in Chicago (which later became Northwestern University School of Law). While preparing for the bar exam, he taught high school and met Mary Elizabeth Baird, a cousin of William Sherman Jennings. He married her on Oct. 1, 1884, and they settled in Salem, which at the time had a population of two thousand.

Mary became a lawyer and collaborated with him on all his speeches and writings. He practiced law in Jacksonville from 1883 to 1887, then moved to the boom city of Lincoln, Nebraska. Bryan became a life-long friend of James Dahlman; Dahlman helped carry Nebraska for Bryan twice as state Democratic Party chairman. Even when Dahlman became closely associated with Omaha's vice elements, including the breweries as the city's eight-term mayor, he and Bryan maintained a collegial relationship.

In the Democratic landslide of 1890, Bryan was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives, and he was re-elected by 140 votes in 1892. He ran for the Senate in 1894, but a Republican landslide led to the state Legislature's choice of a Republican for the Senate seat.

First campaign for the White House: 1896

Bryan had an innate talent at oratory. He gave speeches, organized meetings, and adopted resounding resolutions that eventually culminated in the founding of the American Bimetallic League, which then evolved into the National Bimetallic Union, and finally the National Silver Committee. At the time many farmer's groups believed that by increasing the amount of currency in circulation, commodities would receive higher prices. They were opposed by banks and bond holders who feared inflation. The ultimate goal of the league was to garner support on national level for the reinstatement the coinage of silver. With others, he made certain that the democratic platform reflected the now strengthening spirit of Mid- Western populism. With his support, Charles H. Jones of the St Louis Post-Dispatch, was put on the platform committee and Bryan's plank for free silver was adopted sixteen to one and silently added to the Chicago Democratic Platform, in order to avoid controversy. As a minority member of the resolutions committee, Bryan was able to push the Democratic Party from its post- Civil War basis towards its modern, liberal one. Through these measures, the public and influential democrats became convinced of his capacity to lead and bring change, resulting in his being mentioned as a possible chairman for the Chicago convention

In 1893, the repeal of the Sherman Silver Purchase Act resulted in the collapse of the silver market. Bryan delivered speeches across the country for free silver from 1894 to 1896, building a grass-roots reputation as a powerful champion of the cause.

At the 1896 Democratic National Convention, Bryan lambasted Eastern moneyed classes for supporting the gold standard at the expense of the average worker. His "Cross of Gold" speech made him the sensational new face in the Democratic party. That same year he became the first presidential candidate to campaign in a car (a donated Mueller) in Decatur, Illinois.

The Bourbon Democrats who supported incumbent conservative President Grover Cleveland were defeated, and the party's agrarian and silver factions voted for Bryan, giving him the nomination of the Democratic Party. At the age of 36, Bryan became (and still remains) the youngest presidential nominee of a major party in American history.

Disappointed with the direction of their party, Gold Democrats invited Cleveland to run as a third-party candidate, but he declined. Cleveland did, however, support John M. Palmer, nominee of the Gold Democrats, rather than Bryan.

Bryan also formally received the nominations of the Populist Party and the Silver Republican Party. With the three nominations, voters from any party could vote for Bryan without crossing party lines. In 1896, the Populists rejected Bryan's Democratic running mate, Maine banker Arthur Sewall, and named as his running mate Georgia Populist Thomas E. Watson. People could vote for Bryan and Sewell (on the Democratic or Silver Republican lines), or for Bryan and Watson (on the People's Party line).

The Republicans nominated William McKinley on a platform calling for prosperity for everyone through industrial growth, high tariffs, and sound money (gold). Republicans ridiculed Bryan as a Populist. However, "Bryan's reform program was not based on the Populists--for example, the Populists Free Silver took Free Silver from Bryan's Democrats, not vice versa--but he used the same crusading rhetoric against railroads, banks, insurance companies and businesses that has often been mistaken for Populism. Bryan remained a staunch Democrat throughout his career.

Bryan demanded Bimetallism and "Free Silver" at a ratio of 16:1. Most leading Democratic newspapers rejected his candidacy. Despite this rejection by the newspapers, Bryan won the Democratic vote.

Republicans discovered in August that Bryan was solidly ahead in the South and West, but far behind in the Northeast. He appeared to be ahead in the Midwest, so the Republicans concentrated their efforts there. They said Bryan was a madman, a religious fanatic surrounded by anarchists, who would wreck the economy. By late September, the Republicans felt they were ahead in the decisive Midwest and began emphasizing that McKinley would bring prosperity to all Americans. McKinley scored solid gains among the middle classes, factory and railroad workers, prosperous farmers, and the German Americans who rejected free silver. Bryan gave 500 speeches in 27 states. McKinley won by a margin of 271 to 176 in the electoral college.

War and peace: 1898–1900

Bryan strongly supported the Spanish-American War in 1898. According to historian William Leuchtenburg, "few political figures exceeded the enthusiasm of William Jennings Bryan for the Spanish war." Bryan argued that "universal peace cannot come until justice is enthroned throughout the world. Until the right has triumphed in every land and love reigns in every heart, government must, as a last resort, appeal to force." He volunteered for duty and became colonel of a Nebraska militia regiment. He contracted typhoid fever in Florida and stayed there to recuperate, never seeing combat. After the war, Bryan opposed the annexation of the Philippines (though he did support the Treaty of Paris that ended the war). Bryan gave a speech at the Democratic National Convention in 1900 called "The Paralyzing Influence of Imperialism." In this speech he discusses his views against the annexation of the Philippines, questioning the United States's right to overpower people of another country just for a military base. He mentions, at the beginning of the speech, that the United States should not try to emulate the imperialism of Great Britain and other European countries.

Presidential election of 1900

He ran as an anti-imperialist in 1900, finding himself in alliance with Andrew Carnegie and other millionaires. Republicans mocked Bryan as indecisive, or a coward, a point spoofed by the Bryan-like Cowardly Lion in ''The Wonderful Wizard of Oz'', published in the spring of 1900.

Bryan combined anti-imperialism with free silver, saying:

The nation is of age and it can do what it pleases; it can spurn the traditions of the past; it can repudiate the principles upon which the nation rests; it can employ force instead of reason; it can substitute might for right; it can conquer weaker people; it can exploit their lands, appropriate their property and kill their people; but it cannot repeal the moral law or escape the punishment decreed for the violation of human rights.

In a typical day he gave four hour-long speeches and shorter talks that added up to six hours of speaking. At an average rate of 175 words a minute, he turned out 63,000 words, enough to fill 52 columns of a newspaper. In Wisconsin, he once made 12 speeches in 15 hours. He held his base in the South, but lost part of the West as McKinley retained the Northeast and Midwest and rolled up a landslide. McKinley won the electoral college with a count of 292 votes compared to Bryan's 155. Bryan lost more states than he had in 1896.

Chautauqua circuit

Before Bryan held any political office there remained a need for income; public speaking would not become any less of a passion as it also became a source of income for Bryan and his family. Bryan was a regular on what was informally called the "Chautauqua circuit," in which celebrities traveled from town to town, over and over, giving paid speeches.

Bryan owned land in Nebraska and a ranch in Texas; both were paid for with earnings from speeches and his weekly newspaper ''The Commoner''. Bryan usually charged $500 per speech in addition to a percentage of the profits.

Presidential election of 1908

The 1908 election was Bryan’s third attempt at gaining the presidency. The Democrats nominated Bryan by a wide margin at the Democratic convention held in Denver and decided on John Kern, a politician from Indiana, as his running mate. Bryan ran against the Republicans, and Theodore Roosevelt’s hand-picked nominee William Howard Taft.

Bryan launched a special message to Congress, suggesting income and inheritance taxes, publicity on campaign contribution and opposing the use of the navy for the collection of private debts. Taking a modern conservative viewpoint, in contemporary times, that the government that governs least, and intrudes the least, and lets the private sector, and individual merit and ability to run the nation he inserted in a speech he had no desire, nor did he think it was beneficial for the government ownership upon the nation, and he would be powerless to force government ownership upon the country against the will of the people. He further elucidated his point by launching campaign of attacks against corporation domination, which he asserted had no altruism. Going on to urge that all corporation contributions be made public before the election day, and that failure to cooperate be made a penal offense.

The GOP ran its campaign on the benefits of the Roosevelt administration, creation of a postal service, continuation of "Sound Currency", citizenship for Puerto Rico inhabitants, regulation on big business, and tariff revision in protectionist mode.

Bryan and the Democrats’ platform denounced the wrongs done by the Republican party: Congress spent too much money; Roosevelt hand picked Taft in undemocratic fashion; Republicans wanted centralization; Republicans favored monopolies. In response, Bryan unleashed the slogan, "Shall the People Rule?" In a time of peace and prosperity, and Republican trust-busting, Bryan fared poorly among the voters. He lost the electoral college 321 to 162, his worst defeat yet, and did not carry any of the states in the Northeast.

Chautauqua circuit: 1900–1912

For the next 25 years, Bryan was the most popular Chautauqua speaker, delivering thousands of paid speeches in towns across the land, even while serving as secretary of state. He mostly spoke about religion, but covered a wide variety of topics. His most popular lecture (and his personal favorite) was a lecture entitled "The Prince of Peace", which stressed that religion was the solid foundation of morality, and individual and group morality was the foundation for peace and equality. Another famous lecture from this period, "The Value of an Ideal", was a stirring call to public service. During this time William Jennings Bryan was initiated as a brother into the Delta Chi Fraternity - Georgetown Chapter .

In a 1905 speech, Bryan warned that "the Darwinian theory represents man reaching his present perfection by the operation of the law of hate, the merciless law by which the strong crowd out and kill off the weak. If this is the law of our development then, if there is any logic that can bind the human mind, we shall turn backward to the beast in proportion as we substitute the law of love. I choose to believe that love rather than hatred is the law of development."

Bryan threw himself into the work of the Social Gospel. Bryan served on organizations containing a large number of theological liberals—he sat on the temperance committee of the Federal Council of Churches and on the general committee of the short-lived Inter-church World Movement.

In 1899 Bryan founded a weekly magazine, ''The Commoner'', calling on Democrats to dissolve the trusts, regulate the railroads more tightly, and support the Progressive Movement. He regarded prohibition as a "local" issue and did not endorse it until 1910. In London in 1906, he presented a plan to the Inter-Parliamentary Peace Conference for arbitration of disputes that he hoped would avert warfare. He tentatively called for nationalization of the railroads, then backtracked and called only for more regulation. His party nominated Bourbon Democrat Alton B. Parker in 1904, who lost to Roosevelt. For two years following this defeat, Bryan would pursue his public speaking ventures on an international stage. From 1904 to 1906, Bryan traveled globally, preaching, sightseeing with his wife Mary, lecturing, and all while escaping the political upheaval in Washington. Bryan crusaded as well for the initiative and referendum, making a whistle-stop campaign tour of Arkansas in 1910. Bryan's speech to the students of Washington and Lee University began the Washington and Lee Mock Convention.

Secretary of State: 1913–1915

For supporting Woodrow Wilson for the presidency in 1912, Bryan was appointed as Secretary of State. However, Wilson only nominally consulted him and made all the major foreign policy decisions himself. Bryan negotiated 28 treaties that promised arbitration of disputes before war broke out between the signatory countries and the United States. He had made several attempts to negotiate a treaty with Germany, but ultimately was never able to succeed. In the civil war in Mexico in 1914, Bryan supported American military intervention.

In September 1914 he wrote President Wilson urging mediation in the First World War:

Bryan tried to choke the American credit to the Entente, saying "money is the worst of all contrabands because it commands everything else" but eventually yielded. He also pointed out that by traveling on British vessels "an American citizen can, by putting his own business above his regard for this country, assume for his own advantage unnecessary risks and thus involve his country in international complications"

Wilson's demands for "strict accountability for any infringement of [American] rights, intentional or incidental" after the sinking of the Lusitania troubled Bryan, leading to his resignation in June 1915.

Prohibition battles: 1916–1925

Despite their differences, Bryan campaigned as a private citizen for Wilson's reelection in 1916. When war was declared in April 1917, Bryan wrote Wilson, "Believing it to be the duty of the citizen to bear his part of the burden of war and his share of the peril, I hereby tender my services to the Government. Please enroll me as a private whenever I am needed and assign me to any work that I can do." Wilson, however, did not allow the 57-year-old Bryan to rejoin the military, and did not offer him any wartime role.

Bryan campaigned for the Constitutional amendments on prohibition and women's suffrage. Partly to avoid Nebraska ethnics such as the German-Americans who were "wet" and opposed to prohibition, Bryan moved to Coconut Grove in Miami, Florida in 1913. He called his home on Brickell Avenue ''Villa Serena''. Later, in 1925, he moved to a new home further south in Coconut Grove on Main Highway called ''Marymont''. Bryan filled lucrative speaking engagements, including playing the part of spokesman for George E. Merrick's new planned community Coral Gables, addressing large crowds across a Venetian pool for an annual salary of over $100,000. He was also extremely active in Christian organizations. Bryan refused to support the party's presidential nominee James M. Cox in 1920, because he deemed Cox not dry enough. As one biographer explains,

Bryan's national campaigning helped Congress pass the 18th Amendment in 1918, which shut down all saloons as of 1920. But while prohibition was in effect, Bryan did not work to secure better enforcement. He opposed a highly controversial resolution at the 1924 convention condemning the Ku Klux Klan, expecting it would soon fold. Bryan disliked the KKK but never publicly attacked it. For the nomination in 1924, he opposed the wet Al Smith; Bryan's brother, Nebraska Governor Charles W. Bryan, was put on the ticket with John W. Davis as candidate for vice president to keep the Bryanites in line. Bryan was very close to his younger brother Charles and endorsed him for the vice presidency.

Bryan was the chief proponent of the Harrison Narcotics Tax Act, the precursor to our modern War on Drugs. However, he argued for the act's passage more as an international obligation than on moral grounds.

Fighting the theory of evolution: 1918–1925

Before World War I, Bryan believed moral progress could achieve equality at home and, in the international field, peace between all the world's nations.

Bryan opposed the theory of evolution for two reasons. First, he believed that what he considered a materialistic account of the descent of man through evolution undermined the Bible. Second, he saw neo-Darwinism or Social Darwinism as a great evil force in the world promoting hatred and conflicts, especially the World War.

In his famous Chautauqua lecture, "The Prince of Peace," Bryan warned the theory of evolution could undermine the foundations of morality. However, he concluded, "While I do not accept the Darwinian theory I shall not quarrel with you about it."

One book Bryan read at this time convinced him that neo-Darwinism (emphasizing the struggle of the races) had undermined morality in Germany. Bryan was heavily influenced by Vernon Kellogg's 1917 book, ''Headquarters Nights: A Record of Conversations and Experiences at the Headquarters of the German Army in Belgium and France'', which asserted (on the basis of a conversation with a reserve officer named Professor von Flussen) that German intellectuals were social Darwinists totally committed to might-makes-right.

Bryan also read ''The Science of Power'' (1918) by British social theorist Benjamin Kidd, which attributed the philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche to German nationalism, materialism, and militarism, which in turn was the outworking of the social Darwinian hypothesis.

In 1920, Bryan told the World Brotherhood Congress the theory of evolution was "the most paralyzing influence with which civilization has had to deal in the last century" and that Nietzsche, in carrying the theory of evolution to its logical conclusion, "promulgated a philosophy that condemned democracy,... denounced Christianity,... denied the existence of God, overturned all concepts of morality,... and endeavored to substitute the worship of the superhuman for the worship of Jehovah."

By 1921, Bryan saw Darwinism as a major internal threat to the US. The major study which seemed to convince Bryan of this was James H. Leuba's ''The Belief in God and Immortality, a Psychological, Anthropological and Statistical Study'' (1916). In this study, Leuba shows that during four years of college a considerable number of college students lost their faith. Bryan was horrified that the next generation of American leaders might have the degraded sense of morality which he believed had prevailed in Germany and caused the Great War. Bryan then launched an anti-evolution campaign.

The campaign kicked off in October 1921, when the Union Theological Seminary in Richmond, Virginia invited Bryan to deliver the James Sprunt Lectures. At its heart was a lecture entitled "The Origin of Man", in which Bryan asked, "what is the role of man in the universe and what is the purpose of man?" For Bryan, the Bible was absolutely central to answering this question, and moral responsibility and the spirit of brotherhood could only rest on belief in God.

The Sprunt lectures were published as ''In His Image'', and sold over 100,000 copies, while "The Origin of Man" was published separately as ''The Menace of the theory of evolution'' and also sold very well.

Bryan was worried that the theory of evolution was making grounds not only in the universities, but also within the church itself. Many colleges were still church-affiliated at this point. The developments of 19th century liberal theology, and higher criticism in particular, had left the door open to the point where many clergymen were willing to embrace the theory of evolution and claimed that it was not contradictory with their being Christians. Determined to put an end to this, Bryan, who had long served as a Presbyterian elder, decided to run for the position of Moderator of the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in the USA, which was at the time embroiled in the Fundamentalist-Modernist Controversy (Under Presbyterian church governance, clergy and laymen are equally represented in the General Assembly, and the post of Moderator is open to any member of General Assembly). Bryan's main competition in the race was the Rev. Charles F. Wishart, president of the College of Wooster, who had loudly endorsed the teaching of the theory of evolution in the college. Bryan lost to Wishart by a vote of 451-427. Bryan then failed in a proposal to cut off funds to schools where the theory of evolution was taught. Instead, the General Assembly announced disapproval of materialistic (as opposed to theistic) evolution.

In his efforts to bring some publicity to his cause, Bryan joined the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 1924 and attended the annual meeting. A featured session at the meeting was a debate on biological evolution between Bryan and Edward Loranus Rice, a developmental biologist from the Methodist-associated Ohio Wesleyan University.

According to author Ronald L. Numbers, Bryan was not nearly as much of a fundamentalist as many modern-day creationists, and is more accurately described as a "day-age creationist": "William Jennings Bryan, the much misunderstood leader of the post–World War I antievolution crusade, not only read the Mosaic "days" as geological "ages" but allowed for the possibility of organic evolution—so long as it did not impinge on the supernatural origin of Adam and Eve."

Scopes trial: 1925

In addition to his unsuccessful advocacy of banning the teaching of evolution in church-run universities, Bryan also actively lobbied for state laws banning public schools from teaching evolution. The legislatures of several Southern states proved more receptive to his anti-evolution message than the Presbyterian Church had, and passed laws banning the teaching of evolution in public schools after Bryan addressed them. A prominent example was the Butler Act of 1925, making it unlawful in Tennessee to teach that mankind evolved from lower life forms.

Bryan's participation in the highly publicized 1925 Scopes Trial served as a capstone to his career. He was asked by William Bell Riley to represent the World Christian Fundamentals Association as counsel at the trial. During the trial, Bryan took the stand and was questioned by defense lawyer Clarence Darrow about his views on the Bible. "Asked when the Flood occurred, Bryan consulted ''Usher's Bible Concordance'',and gave the date as 2348 B.C., or 4273 years ago. Did not Bryan know, asked Darrow, that Chinese civilization had been traced back at least 7000 years?" Bryan conceded that he did not. He was also asked if the records of any other religion contain any mention of a flood at the time he cited? And Bryan replied: "The Christian religion has always been good enough for me--I never found it necessary to study any competing religion."

The national media reported the trial in great detail, with H. L. Mencken using Bryan as a symbol of Southern ignorance (despite his not being from the South) and anti-intellectualism. In a more humorous vein, satirist Richard Armour stated in ''It All Started With Columbus'' that Darrow had "made a monkey out of" Bryan due to Bryan's ignorance of the Bible.

After the judge retroactively expunged all of Bryan's answers to Darrow's questions, both sides closed without summation. The jury quickly returned a guilty verdict with the defense's encouragement, and Bryan won the case. However, the state supreme court reversed the verdict on a technicality and Scopes went free.

Biologist Stephen Jay Gould has speculated that Bryan's anti-evolution views were a result of his Populist idealism and suggests that Bryan's fight was really against eugenics. However, the biographers, especially Michael Kazin, reject that conclusion, based on Bryan's failure during the trial or at any other time to attack eugenics; Kazin notes that there is a section on eugenics in Civic Biology, which was the biology textbook Scopes was in trouble for using.

Death

Immediately after the trial, Bryan continued to edit and deliver speeches, traveling hundreds of miles that week. On Sunday, July 26, 1925, he drove from Chattanooga to Dayton, Tennessee to attend a church service, ate a meal, and died (the result of diabetes and fatigue) in his sleep that afternoon—just five days after the Scopes trial ended. School Superintendent Walter White proposed that Dayton should create a Christian college as a lasting memorial to Bryan; fund raising was successful and Bryan College opened in 1930. Bryan is buried in Arlington National Cemetery. His tombstone reads "He kept the Faith." He was survived by among others, a daughter, Congresswoman Ruth Bryan Owen and her son (by artist William Homer Leavitt) John Bryan Leavitt and daughter Ruth Leavitt, as well as two children by her second husband, British Royal Engineers officer Reginald A. Owen.

Popular image

''Inherit the Wind'', a 1955 play by Jerome Lawrence and Robert Edwin Lee, is a fictionalized account of the Scopes Trial written in response to McCarthyism. A populist thrice-defeated Presidential candidate from Nebraska named Matthew Harrison Brady comes to a small town named Hillsboro in the Deep South to help prosecute a young teacher for teaching evolution to his schoolchildren. He is opposed by a famous trial lawyer, Henry Drummond, and chastised by a cynical newspaperman as the trial assumes a national profile. Critics of the play charge that it mischaracterizes Bryan and the trial.

Bryan also appears as a character in Douglas Moore's 1956 opera, ''The Ballad of Baby Doe'' and is briefly mentioned in John Steinbeck's ''East of Eden''. In addition, he is a (very) minor character in Thomas Wolfe's ''Look Homeward, Angel''. His death is referred to in Ernest Hemingway's ''The Sun Also Rises''. In Robert A. Heinlein's ''Job: A Comedy of Justice'', Bryan's unsuccessful or successful runs for the presidency are seen as the "splitting off" events of the alternate histories through which the protagonists travel.

In political cartoons

The sheer volume of political propaganda cartoons featuring Bryan is a testament to the amusement and fear he caused among conservatives. Bryan campaigned tirelessly, championing the ideas of the farmers and workers, using his skills as a famed orator to ultimately reshape the Democratic Party into a more progressive one. These political cartoons attacked just about every facet of Bryan’s character and policy. They mocked his religious fervor, his campaign slogans, and even his ability to unify parties for a common cause. As Keen puts it, "The art of propaganda is to create a portrait that incarnates the idea of what we wish to destroy so we will react rather than think, and automatically focus our free-floating hostility, indistinct frustrations, and unnamed fears". Bryan embodied these fears of the Republican Party of the time, which is clearly evident in the lengths they went to deface his character in these cartoons.

The most notable cartoons are of Bryan illustrated as a snake, representing Populism, swallowing a donkey, symbolizing the Democratic Party. Another notable Bryan cartoon is one where he is standing atop a Bible, marketing the sales of a "crown of thorns" and a "cross of gold" both referencing "The Cross of Gold" his most popular speech. Other cartoons can analyze overall judgments of Bryan’s continuous failure to win the Presidential Election and Bryan can be seen as some sort of puppet or smaller figure in comparison to other presidential elect opponents.

Nicknames

Bryan had an unusually high number of nicknames given to him in his lifetime; most of these were given by his loyal admirers in the Democratic Party. In addition to his best-known nickname, "The Great Commoner", he was also called "The Silver Knight of the West" (due to his support of the free silver issue) and the "Boy Orator of the Platte" (a reference to his oratorical skills and his home near the Platte River in Nebraska). A derisive nickname given by journalist H.L. Mencken, a prominent Bryan critic, was "The Fundamentalist Pope", a reference to Bryan's devout religious views. He is called "Adam-and-Eve" Bryan in "O Russet Witch!, Tales of the Jazz Age" by F. Scott Fitzgerald.

Legacy

Michael Kazin considers Bryan the first of the 20th century "celebrity politicians", better known for their personalities and communications skills than their political views. Shannon Jones, on a Socialist website, claims that Bryan never took a principled stand against white supremacy in the Southern United States. Alan Wolfe has concluded that Bryan's "legacy remains complicated". Form and content mix uneasily in Bryan's politics. The content of his speeches leads in a direct line to the progressive reforms adopted by 20th century Democrats. But the form his actions took was a romantic invocation of the American past, a populist insistence on the wisdom of ordinary folk, and a faith-based insistence on sincerity and character.

In ''They Also Ran'', Irving Stone criticized Bryan as a person who was egocentric and never admitted wrong. Stone mentioned how Bryan lived a sheltered life and therefore, could not feel the suffering of the common man. He speculated that Bryan merely acted as a champion of common men in order to get their votes. Stone mentioned that none of Bryan's ideas were original and that he did not have the brains to be an effective president. Stone personally believed Bryan to be one of the nation's worst Secretaries of State. He also feared that Bryan would have supported many radical religious blue laws. Stone felt that Bryan had one of the most undisciplined minds of the 19th century and that McKinley, Roosevelt, and Taft all made better presidents.

A number of prominent personalities, however, have also defended Bryan and his legacy. In 1962, the journalist Merle Miller interviewed former President Harry Truman. When asked about Bryan, Truman replied that he [Bryan] "was a great one—one of the greatest". Truman also claimed that, in his opinion, "if it wasn't for old Bill Bryan there wouldn't be any liberalism at all in the country now. Bryan kept liberalism alive, he kept it going." In 1900, Truman, then aged 16, had served as a page to the Democratic National Convention in Kansas City. There he had heard Bryan give a speech to the convention's delegates and was deeply impressed. In his biography of Truman, the historian David McCullough wrote that in 1900 Truman and his father "declared themselves thorough 'Bryan men'... Bryan remained an idol for Harry, as the voice of the common man". Tom L. Johnson, the famed progressive mayor of Cleveland, Ohio, referred to Bryan's campaign in 1896 as "the first great struggle of the masses in our country against the privileged classes". In a 1934 speech dedicating a memorial to Bryan, President Franklin D. Roosevelt said "I think that we would choose the word 'sincerity' as fitting him [Bryan] most of all...it was that sincerity that served him so well in his life-long fight against sham and privilege and wrong. It was that sincerity which made him a force for good in his own generation and kept alive many of the ancient faiths on which we are building today. We...can well agree that he fought the good fight; that he finished the course; and that he kept the faith."

Bryan was one of the best known speakers of his time, and he became a fixture of the Democratic party and a hero to the common man. Starting with his Cross of Gold speech, Bryan brought the populist party into the Democratic, and with his common man message he would inevitably draw the African-American and feminist vote into the party. Bryan became the bridge that brought different factions into the party, and paved the way for liberal democrats like Franklin D. Roosevelt with his New Deal legislation. As noted by Bryan's biographer Michael Kazin,

“Bryan was the first leader of a major party to argue for permanently expanding the power of the federal government to serve the welfare of ordinary Americans from the working and middle classes....he did more than any other man-between the fall of Grover Cleveland and the election of Woodrow Wilson-to transform his party from a bulwark of laissez-faire to the citadel of liberalism we identify with Franklin D. Roosevelt and his ideological descendants.”

Honors

Bryan County, Oklahoma is named after him. Bryan Memorial Hospital (now BryanLGH Medical Center) of Lincoln, Nebraska, and Bryan College located in Dayton, Tennessee, are also named for William Jennings Bryan. The William Jennings Bryan House in Nebraska was named a U.S. National Historic Landmark in 1963. The Bryan Home Museum is a by-appointment only museum at his birthplace in Salem, Illinois. Salem is also home to Bryan Park and a large statue of Bryan. Omaha Bryan High School and Bryan Middle School in Bellevue, Nebraska are named for him. He is also honored by having an elementary school in Mission, Texas named after him, Bryan Elementary School on a street named after him, Bryan Street.

He has been honored by the United States Postal Service with a $2.00 Great Americans series postage stamp.

See also

History of creationism

Fundamentalist-Modernist Controversy

Political interpretations of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz

History of the United States Democratic Party

Progressive Movement

U.S. presidential elections of 1896, 1900 and 1908.

William Jennings Bryan House

References

Bibliography

Biographies

Cherny, Robert W. ''A Righteous Cause: The Life of William Jennings Bryan'' (1994).

Coletta; Paolo E. ''William Jennings Bryan'' 3 vols. (1964), the most detailed biography. online vol 1; online vol 2; online vol 3

Glad, Paul W. ''The Trumpet Soundeth: William Jennings Bryan and His Democracy 1896–1912'' (1966).

Hibben; Paxton. ''The Peerless Leader, William Jennings Bryan'' (1929).

Kazin, Michael. ''A Godly Hero: The Life of William Jennings Bryan'' (2006).

Koenig, Louis W. ''Bryan: A Political Biography of William Jennings Bryan'' (1971).

Levine, Lawrence W. ''Defender of the Faith: William Jennings Bryan, The Last Decade, 1915–1925'' (1965).

Werner; M. R. ''Bryan'' (1929).

Specialized studies

on 1896

Bensel, Richard Franklin. ''Passion and Preferences: William Jennings Bryan and the 1896 Democratic Convention'' (2008)

Analysis of the historiography. Argues that fundamentalists thought they had won Scopes trial but death of Bryan shook their confidence. Puts Scopes in larger religious context. On Bryan's place in Democratic Party history and ideology.

Primary sources

Bryan, William Jennings. ''William Jennings Bryan: selections'' ed. by Ray Ginger (1967) 259 pages

Bryan, William Jennings. ''The first battle: a story of the campaign of 1896'' (1897), 693pp; campaign speeches online edition

''The Commoner Condensed'', annual compilation of ''The Commoner'' magazine; full text online for 1901, 1902, 1903, 1907, 1907, 1908

Bryan, William Jennings. ''The old world and its ways'' (1907) 560 pages full text online

Bryan, William Jennings. ''Speeches of William Jennings Bryan'' edited by Mary Baird Bryan (1909) full text online

Bryan, William Jennings. ''In His image'' (1922) 226pp full text online

Bryan, William Jennings. ''The Memoirs: of William Jennings Bryan, by himself and his wife'' (1925) 560pp; online edition

External links

Harper's Weekly "He Made It All By Himself" Political Cartoon, on 1900 presidential campaign

American Memory: Today in History: March 19

''The Duel In the Shade'' – Darrow's examination of Bryan at the Scopes Trial

"William Jennings Bryan" at ''The American Experience: Woodrow Wilson'' on PBS

"William Jennings Bryan" at ''The American Experience: The Monkey Trial'' on PBS

Text of Vachel Lindsay's famous poem honoring Bryan.

William Jennings Bryan cylinder recordings, from the Cylinder Preservation and Digitization Project at the University of California, Santa Barbara Library.

Michael Kazin: "A Godly Hero" interview about Jennings on The Diane Rehm Show

"The Deity of Christ" – paper by Bryan on the subject

Information on Bryan's thought and influence, including quotations from his speeches and writings.

William Jennings Bryan: The Ideal Republic (listen online)

William Jennings Bryan papers at Nebraska State Historical Society

Photo of William Jennings Bryan with his great-granddaughter, Ruth Meeken

{{U.S. Secretary box | before=Philander C. Knox | after=Robert Lansing | years=March 5, 1913 – June 9, 1915 | president= Woodrow Wilson | department= Secretary of State}}

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The Cross of Gold speech was delivered by William Jennings Bryan at the 1896 Democratic National Convention in Chicago on July 8, 1896. The speech advocated bimetallism. Following the Coinage Act (1873), the United States abandoned its policy of bimetallism and began to operate a ''de facto'' gold standard. In 1896, the Democratic Party wanted to standardize the value of the dollar to silver and opposed a monometallic gold standard. The inflation that would result from the silver standard would make it easier for farmers and other debtors to pay off their debts by increasing their revenue dollars. It would also reverse the deflation which the U.S. experienced from 1873 to 1896.

Opposition

Backers of a monometallic gold standard felt that protection against inflation was of paramount importance, and they believed that a monometallic gold standard was the best way to achieve this end. Inflation is disadvantageous for creditors, and degrades the value of savings. Saving represents deferred spending and a source of capital for lending.

William Jennings Bryan secured the Democratic Party nomination at the convention, but was beaten in the presidential election by William McKinley. This situation was repeated in the year 1900 and the United States adopted the monometallic gold standard ''de jure'' in that year. By the first decade of the twentieth century, among major nations, only China and Hong Kong remained on the silver standard.

The speech

The speech was given in the context of a wider debate about bimetallism at the Democratic convention, and so the greater part of Bryan's speech was devoted to responses to other speakers whose contributions have largely been forgotten. Bryan's speech places him in the camp of Western interests (largely farmers and other borrowers) against Eastern interests (moneylenders), in the camp of rural interests against urban interests, and in the camp of economic nationalists against internationalists who were concerned about the U.S. abandoning the gold standard. Bryan's speech cemented his role as a leading voice for economic populism. The speech criticizes an early form of trickle-down economics, and appears to endorse an early form of socialism: "There are two ideas of government. There are those who believe that if you just legislate to make the well-to-do prosperous, that their prosperity will leak through on those below. The Democratic idea has been that if you legislate to make the masses prosperous their prosperity will find its way up and through every class that rests upon it."

Origin of the name

The speech, with its biblical allusions, gets its popular name from its closing phrase: :"Having behind us the producing masses of this nation and the world, supported by the commercial 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."

At the conclusion of the speech, Bryan stretched out his arms in a Christ-like manner for five seconds, while the crowd remained quiet. According to the ''New York World'', at that point everyone seemed to go mad at once and shrieked and rushed the stage. ''The New York Times'' commented that "a wild, raging irresistible mob" had been unleashed.

See also

U.S. presidential election, 1896

Coinage Act of 1873

Footnotes

External links

Full text and audio version of "Cross of Gold" at History Matters.

The Crime of 73

Category:Speeches Category:Economic history of the United States Category:Political history of the United States Category:History of the United States (1865–1918) Category:Monetary policy Category:Metallism Category:Gold standard Category:1896 in the United States Category:People's Party (United States)

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