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William Jennings Bryan ( March 19 , 1860 – July 26 , 1925 ) was an American lawyer, statesman, and politician. He was a three-time Democratic Party nominee for President Of The United States . Bryan was a devout Presbyterian , a strong proponent of popular democracy, an outspoken critic of banks and railroads, a leader of the Silverite movement in the 1890s, a dominant figure in the Democratic Party, a peace advocate, a prohibitionist, an opponent of Darwinism, and one of the most prominent leaders of the Progressive Movement . He was called "The Great Commoner" because of his total faith in the goodness and rightness of the common people. He was one of the most energetic campaigners in American history, inventing the national stumping tour. In his presidential bids, he promoted Free Silver in 1896, anti-imperialism in 1900, and Antitrust in 1908, calling on all Democrats to renounce conservatism, fight the trusts and big banks, and embrace Progressive Ideas . President Woodrow Wilson appointed him Secretary Of State in 1913, but Bryan resigned in protest against Wilson's policies in 1915. In the 1920s he was a strong supporter of Prohibition , but is probably best known today for his negative criticism of Darwinism , which culminated in the Scopes Trial in 1925. EARLY LIFE Bryan was born in Salem in the Little Egypt region of southern Illinois, where his father was a lawyer and farmer and prominent Democratic politician. His parents were Methodist and Baptist, but he joined the Presbyterian church as a teenager. He was homeschooled until age 10, finding in the Bible and McGuffey Readers the truths he adhered to all his life, such as that gambling and liquor were evil and sinful. He attended the academy attached to Illinois College , then studied classics there, graduating as valedictorian in 1881; he graduated from Union Law School in Chicago. He married Mary Baird in 1884; she became a lawyer and collaborated with him on all his speeches and writings. He practiced law in Jacksonville (1883–87), then moved to the boom city of Lincoln, Nebraska . He was elected to Congress in the Democratic landslide of 1890 and reelected by 140 votes in 1892. In 1894 he ran for the Senate but was overwhelmed in the Republican landslide. RISE TO FAME: 1896 At the 1896 Democratic National Convention , Bryan galvanized the silver forces to defeat Bourbon Democrats tied to incumbent Democratic President Grover Cleveland . Thanks in large part to his Cross Of Gold speech, Bryan won the nomination for President.
Bryan crusaded against the gold standard and the money interests, demanding Bimetallism and "free silver" at a ratio of 16:1. Most leading Democratic newspapers rejected his candidacy, so he took his cause directly to the people, making over 500 speeches in 27 states. The Republicans nominated William McKinley on a program of prosperity through industrial growth, high tariffs, and sound money (that is, gold.) Republicans discovered that by August Bryan was solidly ahead in the South and West, and far behind in the Northeast. But he also appeared to be ahead in the Midwest, so the Republicans concentrated their efforts there. They counter-crusaded against Bryan, warning that he 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 every group of Americans. McKinley scored solid gains among the middle classes, factory and railroad workers, prosperous farmers, and among the German Americans who rejected free silver. William McKinley won by a margin of 271 to 176 in the Electoral College . PROGRESSIVE LEADER Although Bryan never won an election after 1892, he continued to dominate the Democratic party. He strongly supported going to War With Spain In 1898 , and volunteered for combat, arguing 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." Bryan volunteered and became a colonel of a Nebraska militia regiment; he spent the war in Florida and never saw combat. After the war, Bryan came to denounce the imperialism that resulted from it. He strongly opposed the annexation of the Philippines (though he did support the Treaty Of Paris that ended the war). He ran as an anti-imperialist in 1900, finding himself in an awkward alliance with Andrew Carnegie and other millionaire anti-imperialists. Republicans mocked Bryan as indecisive, or even a coward, a theme echoed in the portrayal of the Cowardly Lion in ''The Wonderful Wizard Of Oz'' (1900). In 1900, he combined anti-imperialism with free silver, saying:
Bryan, however, maintained a powerful grip on the Democratic party (broken only in 1904). Bryan ran again in 1900 on issues of free silver and opposition to imperialism. His stamina was evident from his schedule. 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. (No paper printed more than a column or two.) In Wisconsin, he made 12 speeches in 15 hours. 1:272 . 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. Out of office, Bryan gave many speeches and published 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 Gold Bug Alton B. Parker in 1904 , but Bryan was back in 1908 , losing this time to William Howard Taft . After supporting Wilson in 1912, he was rewarded with the top job as Secretary Of State . Wilson made all the major foreign policy decisions himself, only nominally consulting Bryan. Dedicated to peace (though not a pacifist), Bryan negotiated 28 treaties that promised arbitration of disputes before war broke out between that country and the United States; Germany never signed on. He supported American military intervention in the civil war in Mexico in 1914. Bryan resigned in June 1915 over Wilson's strong notes demanding "strict accountability for any infringement of {Link without Title} rights, intentional or incidental." He campaigned energetically for Wilson's reelection in 1916. When war finally 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."Hibben, Peerless Leader, p 356 Wilson, however, did not allow Bryan to rejoin the military and did not offer him any wartime role, so he threw his energies into successful campaigns for Constitutional amendments on prohibition and women's suffrage. 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—-a romantic invocation of the American past, a populist insistence on the wisdom of ordinary folk, a faith-based insistence on sincerity and character—lead just as directly to the Republican Party of Karl Rove and George W. Bush."''Washington Post'' February 5, 2006; Book World p 6 PROHIBITION, THE ANTIEVOLUTION MOVEMENT AND SCOPES TRIAL Bryan moved to . (His father, a Judge , was a Baptist , and his mother converted to this faith from Methodism when Bryan was 12. He and his sister later became Presbyterians .) After leaving the State Department, he shifted focus to social and moral issues, and to world disarmament. He refused to support the party nominee in 1920 because he was not dry enough. As one biographer explains,
He was thus primarily interested in destroying the liquor interest, which controlled politics in many inner-city wards and seemed to be on the other side of every issue. His national campaigning helped Congress pass the 18th Amendment in 1918, which shut down all saloons starting in 1920. While prohibition was in effect, however, he did not work to secure better enforcement. He ignored the Ku Klux Klan , expecting it would soon fold. He strongly opposed wet Al Smith for the nomination in 1924; his brother Charles Bryan was put on the ticket as candidate for vice president to keep the Bryanites in line. By the , the University Of Michigan , Wellesley , Vassar , Barnard , and the University Of Wisconsin , among others—he suggested that no teacher paid from taxation be hired or retained unless he believed in God. By early 1919 his mind was made up. Men must be for him or against him, for or against God."Coletta 3: 200 Bryan actively supported state laws banning public schools from teaching evolution; several southern states did pass such laws after Bryan addressed them. His participation in the highly publicized 1925 Scopes Trial served as a capstone to his career. Bryan was asked by William Bell Riley to represent as counsel the World Christian Fundamentals Association at the trial. During the trial Bryan took the stand and was questioned by defense lawyer Clarence Darrow about his views on the Bible. Biologist Stephen J. Gould has speculated that Bryan's antievolution views were a result of his Populist idealism and suggests that Bryan's fight was really against Social Darwinism , but biographer Michael Kazin has shown Bryan did not make that argument. p 289 The national media reported the trial in great detail, with H. L. Mencken using Bryan as a foil for Southern ignorance and anti-intellectualism. Bryan died on July 26, 1925, only five days after the 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. SEE ALSO REFERENCES Secondary sources
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