McKinley, of Ohio, was nominated for President and Garret A. Hobart, of
New Jersey, for Vice-President. A platform was adopted declaring for the
maintenance of “the existing gold standard” until bimetallism could be
secured by international agreement, which the party was pledged to
promote. The doctrine of a high protective tariff was strongly insisted
on.
Against the financial plank of the platform there was waged a bitter, if
hopeless, fight by the silver men of the West, under the honored
leadership of United States Senator Henry M. Teller, of Colorado. On the
adoption of the platform Senators Teller, Dubois, of Idaho, Pettigrew,
of South Dakota, Cannon, of Utah, and Mantle, of Montana, with three
congressmen and fifteen other delegates, walked out of the convention.
They issued an address to the people declaring monetary reform to be
imperative, that the deadly curse of falling prices might be averted.
The dominant figure of this convention was Marcus A. Hanna, of Ohio, a
millionaire coal and shipping magnate with large industrial and
commercial interests in various sections of the country. In taking
charge of the campaign that resulted in McKinley’s nomination he
introduced his business methods into politics. He had conducted the
canvass throughout along commercial lines. “He has been as smooth as
olive oil and as stiff as Plymouth Rock,” said the New York _Sun_, since
recognized as President McKinley’s personal organ. “He is a manager of
men, a manipulator of events, such as you more frequently encounter in
the back offices of the headquarters of financial and commercial centers
than at district primaries or in the lobbies of convention halls. There
is no color or pretense of statesmanship in his efforts; he seems
utterly indifferent to political principles, and color-blind to
policies, except as they figure as counters in his game. He can be
extremely plausible and innocently deferential in his intercourse with
others, or can flame out on proper occasion in an outburst of
well-studied indignation. He is by turns a bluffer, a compromiser, a
conciliator, and an immovable tyrant. Such men do not enter and
revolutionize national politics for nothing. Now, what is Mark Hanna
after?”
The question was soon answered. Mark Hanna became chairman of the
National Republican committee, United States senator from Ohio, and the
most powerful, if not the all-powerful, influence behind the McKinley
administration. His rapid rise to commanding position and the unyielding
manner in which he has utilized his power have furnished much argument
to such as are inclined to be pessimistic regarding the enduring
qualities of republics.
Early in July the Democratic National convention assembled in Chicago.
Mr. Bryan, who had attended the St. Louis convention as editor-in-chief
of the Omaha _World-Herald_, was here present as a delegate-at-large
from Nebraska. Since the expiration of his second congressional term he
had been active and unwearying in the fight to capture the convention
for free silver. As editor of the _World-Herald_ he had contributed
numerous utterances that were widely quoted by the silver press, and
much of his time had been devoted to delivering speeches and lectures in
the interests of bimetallism in almost every section of the country. He
came to Chicago fresh from a Fourth of July debate at the Crete, Neb.,
Chautauqua, with Hon. John P. Irish, of California, Cleveland’s
collector of the port at San Francisco. Except a few intimate friends in
Nebraska, who knew Bryan’s capacities and ambitions, no man dreamed of
the possibility of his nomination for the presidency. There were
available, tried, and time-honored silver leaders, men who had been
fighting the white metal’s battles for a score of years, notable among
whom were Richard P. Bland, of Missouri, and Henry M. Teller, of
Colorado. One of these, it was generally believed, would be chosen to
lead the forlorn hopes of a regenerated but disrupted democracy.
Mr. Bryan’s nomination was the spontaneous tribute of the convention to
those qualities that since have made him not famous only, but
well-beloved. These qualities are honesty, courage, frankness, and
sincerity. They had veritable life in every line and paragraph of his
great speech defending the free silver plank of the platform, delivered
in reply to the crafty-wise David B. Hill, of New York. Hill, skilled
and experienced practical politician, had pleaded with the convention
that it pay the usual tribute at the shrine of Janus. He had begged that
the _ignus fatuus_ “international bimetallism” be used to lure the
friends of silver into voting the Democratic ticket. Nurtured and
trained in the same school of politics as William McKinley,—the school
whose graduates had for many years dominated all party conventions,—Hill
started back in affright from the prospect of going before the people on
a platform that was straightforward and unequivocal, with its various
planks capable of but one construction.
Mr. Bryan’s speech was as bold and ringing as the platform which he
spoke to defend, with its plank, written by himself, and twice utilized
in Nebraska, demanding “the free and unlimited coinage of both gold and
silver at the present legal ratio of 16 to 1, without waiting for the
aid or consent of any other nation.”
The letter and spirit of that plank were such as the great majority of
the convention were thoroughly in sympathy with. The result of the great
silver propaganda of the two years preceding had been to send to the
convention honest and sincere men with profound convictions and the
courage to express them. To do this, they knew, would be revolutionary,
even as had been the platforms on which the Pathfinder, Fremont, and the
Liberator, Lincoln, ran. But the spirit of revolution from cant and
equivoque was rife in that convention. Of that spirit William Jennings
Bryan was the prophet. In a speech that thrilled into men’s minds and
hearts his defiance and contempt of the opportunists’ policy, his own
fearless confidence in the all-conquering power of truth, he stirred
into an unrestrained tempest the long pent emotions of the delegates.
When he had finished not only was the adoption of the platform by a vote
of two to one assured, but the convention had found its leader whom it
would commission to go forth to preach the old, old gospel of democracy,
rescued from its years of sleep. The nature of Mr. Bryan’s speech may be
gained from these brief extracts:
“When you (turning to the gold delegates) come before us and tell us we
are about to disturb your business interests, we reply that you have
disturbed our business interests by your course. We say to you that you
have made the definition of a business man too limited in its
application. The man who is employed for wages is as much a business man
as his employer; the attorney in a country town is as much a business
man as the corporation counsel in a great metropolis; the merchant at a
cross-roads store is as much a business man as the merchant of New York;
the farmer who goes forth in the morning and toils all day, who begins
in the spring and toils all summer, and who, by the application of brain
and muscle to the natural resources of the country, creates wealth, is
as much a business man as the man who goes upon the board of trade and
bets upon the price of grain: the miners who go down a thousand feet
into the earth, or climb two thousand feet upon the cliffs, and bring
forth from their hiding places the precious metals to be poured into the
channels of trade are as much business men as the few financial magnates
who, in a back room, corner the money of the world. We come to speak for
this broader class of business men.
“Ah, my friends, we say not one word against those who live upon the
Atlantic Coast, but the hardy pioneers who have braved all the dangers
of the wilderness, who have made the desert to blossom as the rose,—the
pioneers away out there (pointing to the west), who rear their children
near to Nature’s heart, where they can mingle their voices with the
voices of the birds, out there where they have erected schoolhouses for
the education of their young, churches where they praise their Creator,
and cemeteries where rest the ashes of their dead—these people, we say,
are as deserving of the consideration of our party as any people in this
country. It is for these that we speak. We do not come as aggressors.
Our war is not a war of conquest; we are fighting in defense of our
homes, our families, and posterity. We have petitioned, and our
petitions have been scorned; we have entreated, and our entreaties have
been disregarded; we have begged, and they have mocked when our calamity
came. We beg no longer; we entreat no more; we petition no more. We defy
them....
“You come and tell us that the great cities are in favor of the gold
standard; we reply that the great cities rest upon our broad and fertile
prairies. Burn down your cities and leave our farms, and your cities
will spring up again as if by magic; but destroy our farms and the grass
will grow in the streets of every city in the country....
“My friends, we declare that this nation is able to legislate for its
own people on every question, without waiting for the aid or consent of
any other nation on earth.... It is the issue of 1776 over again. Our
ancestors, when but three millions in number, had the courage to declare
their political independence of every other nation. Shall we, their
descendants, when we have grown to seventy millions, declare that we are
less independent than our forefathers? No, my friends, that will never
be the verdict of our people. Therefore, we care not upon what lines the
battle is fought. If they say bimetallism is good, but that we can not
have it until other nations help us, we reply that, instead of having a
gold standard because England has, we will restore bimetallism, and then
let England have bimetallism because the United States has it. If they
dare come out in the open field and defend the gold standard as a good
thing, we will fight them to the uttermost. Having behind us the
producing masses of this nation and the world, supported by the
commercial interests, the laboring interest, 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.”
[Illustration: SENATOR J. K. JONES]
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:
“Bryan, with all his ignorance, his cheap demagogy, his intolerable
gabble, his utter lack of common sense, and his general incapacity in
every direction, is a typical Democrat of the new school. His weapon is
wind. His stock in trade is his mouth. Mr. McKinley’s election—and we
apologize to Mr. McKinley for printing his name in the same column with
that of Bryan—is no longer in any doubt whatever. We salute the next
President. As for Bryan, he is a candidate for the political ash-heap.”
For efficient campaigning the two party organizations were most unevenly
matched. The Republican National committee, under the directing genius
of Mark Hanna, assisted liberally by the thoroughly affrighted financial
and corporation magnates of the East, had at its disposal millions of
dollars with which to organize, pay for speakers and literature, reward
the efforts of newspapers and party workers, and debauch the electorate
in states thought to be doubtful. It had the assistance of almost the
entire metropolitan press—with the notable exception of the New York
_Journal_—and the nearly united influence of the large employers of
labor. And even further, it had the pulpit and the religious press. As
the ministers of Christ’s gospel, in 1856, denounced and vilified
Garrison and Phillips, so in 1896 they hurled anathema maranatha at
Bryan and Altgeld. Grave and reverend preachers of national fame
fulminated from their pulpits against “the accursed and treasonable
aims” of Bryan and his supporters, and denounced them as “enemies of
mankind.” Bishop John P. Newman, of the Methodist Episcopal Church,
denounced Bryan as an “anarchist,” and in the church conferences over
which he presided urged the clergy to use their influence to defeat the
Democratic nominees. The Rev. Cortland Myers, in the Baptist Temple at
Brooklyn, said that “the Chicago platform was made in hell.” Rev. Thomas
Dixon, Jr., at the Academy of Music, New York, called Bryan “a mouthing,
slobbering demagogue, whose patriotism is all in his jaw bone.”
Such were the cultured and scholarly contributions made by the noblest
of professions to the discussion of an academic question of finance in
the year of our Lord 1896.
The Democratic committee had little money. It had the support of but few
large newspapers. It was fighting the battles of a party that had been
disrupted and rent in twain at the Chicago convention. In every state
and almost every county of the Union the old local and national leaders
of the party had deserted, and the faithful but disorganized followers
of Bryan had to be moulded anew into the likeness of an army.
The one inspiration of the party was in its leader. The embodiment of
faith, hope, and courage, tireless, indomitable, undismayed by the
fearful odds against him, with the zeal of a crusader he undertook his
mission of spreading the message of democracy through the length and
breadth of the land. For three months, accompanied most of the time by
Mrs. Bryan, he sped to and fro across the American continent, an army of
newspaper correspondents in his train, resting little and sleeping less,
preaching the Chicago platform. His earnestness, his candor, his
boldness, the simplicity of his style, the homeliness of his
illustrations, the convincing power of his argument, the eloquence of
his flights of oratory, and, above all, the pure and lovable character
of the man as it impressed itself on those who met with him—these were
the sparks that fired the hearts of men and left in his wake conviction
fanned into enthusiasm all aflame.
Yet, with all his efforts, despite a record of personal campaigning such
as never before was seen in the recorded history of man, Mr. Bryan was
defeated. The tremendous influence wielded by the great corporate
interests, both by persuasion and by coercion, were such as no man and
no idea could overcome.
The popular vote stood 7,107,822 for McKinley and 6,511,073 for Bryan.
Of the electoral votes McKinley received 271 and Bryan 176, the solid
South and almost solid West going Democratic, while every state north of
the Ohio and east of the Mississippi went Republican.
Immediately after the result was assured Mr. Bryan telegraphed Mr.
McKinley as follows: “HON. WM. MCKINLEY, CANTON, OHIO—Senator Jones has
just informed me that the returns indicate your election, and I hasten
to extend my congratulations. We have submitted the issue to the
American people and their will is law.—W. J. BRYAN.”
Mr. McKinley responded: “HON. W. J. BRYAN, LINCOLN, NEB.—I acknowledge
the receipt of your courteous message of congratulation with thanks, and
beg you will receive my best wishes for your health and
happiness.—WILLIAM MCKINLEY.”
While Mr. Bryan and his party accepted defeat thus gracefully, victory
seemed to have redoubled the venom of the opposition. This post-election
utterance of the New York _Tribune_, founded by Horace Greeley, and then
and now edited by ex-Vice-President Whitelaw Reid, will serve to close
this chapter in the same gentle spirit which marked the close of that
memorable campaign:
“GOOD RIDDANCE
“There are some movements so base, some causes so depraved, that
neither victory can justify them nor defeat entitle them to
commiseration. Such a cause was that which was vanquished
yesterday, by the favor of God and the ballots of the American
people. While it was active and menacing, it was unsparingly
denounced and revealed as what it was, in all its hideous
deformity. Now that it is crushed out of the very semblance of
being, there is no reason why such judgment of it should be
revised. The thing was conceived in iniquity and was brought forth
in sin. It had its origin in a malicious conspiracy against the
honor and integrity of the nation. It gained such monstrous growth
as it enjoyed from an assiduous culture of the basest passions of
the least worthy members of the community. It has been defeated
and destroyed, because right is right and God is God. Its nominal
head was worthy of the cause. Nominal, because the wretched,
rattle-pated boy, posing in vapid vanity and mouthing resounding
rottenness, was not the real leader of that league of hell. He was
only a puppet in the blood-imbued hands of Altgeld, the anarchist,
and Debs, the revolutionist, and other desperados of that stripe.
But he was a willing puppet, Bryan was, willing and eager. Not one
of his masters was more apt at lies and forgeries and blasphemies
and all the nameless iniquities of that campaign against the Ten
Commandments. He goes down with the cause, and must abide with it
in the history of infamy. He had less provocation than Benedict
Arnold, less intellectual force than Aaron Burr, less manliness
and courage than Jefferson Davis. He was the rival of them all in
deliberate wickedness and treason to the Republic. His name
belongs with theirs, neither the most brilliant nor the least
hateful in the list.
“Good riddance to it all, to conspiracy and conspirators, and to
the foul menace of repudiation and anarchy against the honor and
life of the Republic. The people have dismissed it with no
uncertain tones. Hereafter let there be whatever controversies men
may please about the tariff, about the currency, about the Monroe
doctrine, and all the rest. But let there never again be a
proposition to repeal the moral law, to garble the Constitution,
and to replace the Stars and Stripes with the red rag of anarchy.
On those other topics honest men may honestly differ, in full
loyalty to the Republic. On these latter there is no room for two
opinions, save in the minds of traitors, knaves, and fools.”
NEW ISSUES
The half decade between 1895 and 1900 may justly be considered one of
the most important in American history. It witnessed the fiercest battle
between political parties ever fought over the question of finance,—a
contest exceeding in bitterness and the general participation of the
people of the United States therein even the great struggle in which
Andrew Jackson and Nicholas Biddle were the opposing leaders. And,
further, as the outcome of the war with Spain, it saw the birth and
growth of an issue theretofore alien to American soil and portentous for
its ultimate influence over the form and structure of our government. It
was at once recognized as an issue overshadowing in its importance, and
in the face of the greater danger the mutual fears of the friends of
gold and the friends of silver were laid away in one common sepulchre.
On the part of the Democratic party the wraith of imperialism hovering
over the Republic was recognized as the hideous and supreme exhalation
from the poison swamp of plutocracy from which high tariff, trusts, and
a gold standard had already sprung. Through all these policies, asserted
the Democracy, through its recognized leader, Mr. Bryan, ran the common
purpose of exalting the dollar and debasing the man. The Republican
party hesitated long to recognize and admit the new issue, and when it
finally took up the gage of battle it was on the declaration that a
colonial policy, with alien and subject races under its dominion, had
become the “manifest destiny” of the United States.
The cruelties and severities of General Weyler, the commander of the
Spanish forces in Cuba, toward the insurrectionists who were in arms
against Spain’s authority, early in Mr. McKinley’s administration
aroused the indignation of the American people. The fact that the Cubans
were bravely fighting for liberty, that their rebellion was against the
exactions of an old world monarchy, even as ours had been, won them an
instinctive sympathy that grew stronger each day and that finally swept
like a tidal wave into the cabinet meetings at Washington, bearing the
demands of the people of the United States for the intervention of our
government in Cuba’s behalf.
On December 6, 1897, in his message to Congress, the President discussed
the Cuban question at some length, arguing against any interference by
the United States, on the ground that “a hopeful change has supervened
in the policy of Spain toward Cuba.” Speaking of the possible future
relations between this country and Cuba, the President used the words
since so widely quoted against his subsequent policy in the Philippines:
“I speak not of forcible annexation, for that is not to be thought of.
That, by our code of morality, would be criminal aggression.”