EUROPE AND THE CAMPAIGN OF ’96
I
In the summer of 1895, after the adjournment of the legislature, Mr.
Kern, on the advice of his physician, went to Europe for a period of
rest and relaxation, and spent a few weeks in France and England. We are
permitted glimpses of him in his meanderings through letters written at
the time to his father and sister, Mrs. Sarah E. Engel. He sailed from
New York on June 29th on a German ship “not fashionable but substantial
and safe.” Landing at Southampton, he hurried on to London, greatly
impressed by “the beautiful agricultural country--said to be the finest
part of rural England, and rivaling in appearance any part of America I
have seen,” but amused at “the little Jim Crow cars” and the “freight
cars about the size of covered wagons.” In London, where he stayed at
the Morley Hotel, he was fascinated by the throbbing greatness of
things. “It is as far ahead of New York as New York is ahead of
Indianapolis,” he wrote. Here he settled down to seeing London in his
own way, and we find him seated beside the driver of an omnibus,
“getting a bird’s-eye view” of the city, and for an additional six pence
having pointed out the great parks, the British Museum, St. Pauls,
London Bridge, the Bank of England, the Tower, the Mansion House, the
Temple, Westminster, and the various churches. Having thus got his
bearings he settled down to intensive touring, delighted with everything
he saw except the people whose condescension he resented. General
Patrick Collins of Boston, a friend, and then consul-general to London,
was attentive, and he had a letter to T. P. (Tay Pay) O’Connor, the
famous member of the Irish parliamentary party, who pointed out the
lions of English public life in the House of Commons. He spent some time
in the courts, visited points of historic interest, and attended
services in St. Pauls, which he found “bewildering.” “The music of the
great double organ and all the hundred voices of the choir,
reverberating throughout the arches and the domes, was beautiful, but
awe inspiring.”
At the Morley Hotel he met Judge Alton B. Parker, a prominent member of
the New York bar, destined to be his party’s nominee for the presidency
nine years later, and discovering many mutual interests and friendships,
an attachment was formed which existed to the day of Kern’s death. The
two lawyers tramped the tourist’s path together and had many a chat at
the Morley.
After little more than a week in London he crossed to Paris, where his
personal friend and political co-worker, Samuel E. Morss, editor of _The
Indianapolis Sentinel_, was consul-general, and here he was given every
advantage that the official prestige of his friend could bestow. He was
delighted with Paris, “the most beautiful city in the world,” and
especially with the French people. “The people of all classes are
happy,” he wrote his father, “and go in for having a good time. The very
poorest classes are bright, cheerful, and clean. I don’t think I saw a
sad face in France. They are quite prosperous and show great evidence of
thrift.” Morss turned his office over to his subordinates and devoted
his entire time to entertaining the man from home, and it is not
improbable that not a little Hoosier politics was discussed between the
two.
While it was his intention to visit Ireland, his experience in channel
crossing on his return to England was so disheartening that he abandoned
his original plan of visiting Dublin and the Killarney lakes. On
learning that the weather at the time was abominable in Scotland he
decided to spend the remainder of his time in England and see some of
the country outside London. “One of the most interesting trips I have
made,” he wrote Mrs. Engel, “was to the Shakespeare country. I went from
London to Harrow, then to Rugby, made famous by Tom Hughes’ great book,
then to Coventry, then to Lemington, a great watering place, thence by
coach along the banks of the Avon to Stratford-on-Avon, where
Shakespeare was born and is buried. This trip--thirteen miles--was
through the most beautiful country I have ever seen. Stratford is a
little city of 8,000, and one sees and hears nothing but Shakespeare.
The house in which he was born, and the cottage where Ann Hathaway lived
and in which he courted and married her are very old, but are preserved
by trustees. The house in which he was born is filled with Shakespearian
relics of every description. His tomb and monument are in the village
church. The people get their principal living from tourists. There have
been over 20,000 visitors there this year, and each one has something to
pay every time he turns around.”
On this trip, too, he visited Warwick Castle, and later on Windsor
Castle. Like a true Democrat he did not fail to “drive out three miles
to the fields of Runnymede, where the English barons compelled King John
to sign the Magna Charta;” and the sentimental side of his nature
impelled him to make a journey of reverence to the tomb of Gray, the
poet, and the church whose curfew “tolls the knell of parting day.”
Contrary to the spirit of the average tourist, he took a deep interest
in English farms and farming and in a letter to his sister, who lived
upon a farm, he observed: “The farming here is splendid. Every foot of
ground is made to produce and produce well. There is no poor farming
here, and no poor crops this year. The wheat is now being harvested.
They raise no corn here--but produce an article called ‘horse
beans’--something similar to our peas, which the horses thrive on. The
horses are splendid beasts. Those used for draft purposes look nearly as
large as elephants, and their driving horses are very fine. It is a
great mutton-eating nation, and sheep are raised by the thousand--you
see them everywhere.”
By the latter part of August he admits that he has “had his fill of
sightseeing and anxious to get back home and to work.” His health was
greatly benefited by the change when he reached New York in the first
week of September.
II
At the time of his return to Indiana the great debate to determine the
position the Democratic party was to take on the money question had
commenced. The administration of Grover Cleveland had lost the
confidence of the major part of the party in the state. The bond issue
stuck in the craws of the masses. The silver wave was sweeping over the
country, destined to leave many wrecks in its wake and to throw upon the
rocks many new lights of party leading. In Indiana the silver forces
were militantly aggressive and were busily engaged in perfecting an
organization which was to make history. In view of his subsequent
intimacy with Mr. Bryan and the radical forces of the party, it is
interesting to find that during the period of the preliminary debate Mr.
Kern remained unresponsive to the fervent appeals of the friends of
silver. As the time for the state convention approached, the
conservative members of the party took counsel in the hope of stemming
the tide which gave promise of committing the party aggressively to the
cause of the free and unlimited coinage of silver without awaiting the
action of any other nation. Many of the most influential and prominent
party leaders in the state were strongly opposed to such action, and
were convinced that such a course would work irreparable disaster to the
party prospects for years to come. It was not a new party battle in
Indiana. In other days, when the fiat money idea was uppermost in the
public mind, it required all the prestige of the leadership of Hendricks
and McDonald to dissuade the party from adopting a radical platform in
conformity with the greenback philosophy.
About the middle of May, 1896, a free silver conference was held in
Indianapolis which bubbled with enthusiasm and seethed with the spirit
of revolution. Some of the leaders in the movement boldly announced that
the failure of the party to stand for the free and unlimited coinage of
silver would release them from all allegiance to the party in the
campaign. The conservatives, or gold men, determined to challenge what
they considered a dangerous movement at a mass meeting which was called
at the English Opera House in Indianapolis on the evening of May 28.
This meeting was addressed by some of the most popular leaders in the
state and was presided over by Captain W. R. Myers, long an idol upon
the stump. Speeches were made by Alonzo G. Smith, former
attorney-general, former Congressman William D. Bynum, who had been a
prime favorite with the Indiana Democracy and enjoyed a well-deserved
national reputation, former Congressman George W. Cooper of Columbus and
Mr. Kern. Resolutions were adopted on the motion of Pierre Gray, son of
Governor Isaac P. Gray, four years before Indiana’s candidate for the
presidency. A committee was appointed to work for “the cause of sound
money” at the coming convention, consisting of such well-known Democrats
as Thomas Taggart, John W. Holtzman, S. O. Pickens, John R. Wilson,
Capt. W. R. Myers, William D. Bynum, James E. McCullough, James L. Keach
and John W. Kern. It would be a travesty of history to ignore the fact
that previous to the action of the national convention at Chicago Mr.
Kern was strongly opposed to the free and unlimited coinage of silver
without regard to the action of any other nation. He realized early the
trend of the times and the difficulty of changing the drift. Times were
hard. The party had been shamefully betrayed by the Interests in the
making of the tariff law. The bond issue had divorced the confidence of
the rank and file of the party from Cleveland. The spirit of revolution
was in the air. It required courage to stand forth and command the tide
to turn back.
One week later this mass meeting was met by the silver forces with one
of their own at the same place which was addressed by John Gilbert
Shanklin, the brilliant editor of _The Evansville Courier_, and former
Congressman Benjamin F. Shively, who was, by long odds, the most
eloquent champion of silver in the state.
The battle was on.
Seldom has a more turbulent, revolutionary convention ever met in
Indiana than that which was called to order in Tomlinson Hall to fight
out the party differences on the money question. Bynum, who had made
himself a party idol by his mastery of the tariff question and his
haughty defiance of Tom Reed, was hooted to silence repeatedly when he
attempted to speak. He stood stubbornly minute after minute waiting for
the lull in the storm that never came and finally took his seat. Later
the motion of John E. Lamb of Terre Haute to grant him ten minutes for a
hearing was hooted down. The gold delegation from Marion county
(Indianapolis) was thrown out over the written protest of Kern, the
only member of the committee on credentials who was not a silver man.
Governor Mathews was indorsed for president, and only the personal plea
of Shanklin prevented the convention from making him a delegate at large
in the place of a gold man personally selected by the governor. Mr.
Shively was nominated for governor and started out on his remarkable
canvass in which his speeches were only approached in brilliancy by
those of Bryan. Samuel M. Ralston also began his career in state
politics as the nominee for secretary of state. And a little later at
Chicago Bryan swept the convention off its feet with his famous “cross
of gold and crown of thorns” speech and set forth on the most amazing
canvass in the history of the republic.
Then the nation began to boil and bubble as never before. Silver men
deserted the Republican party, and gold men proclaimed rebellion from
the Democratic ranks. Families were divided and father arrayed against
son and brother against brother. Nowhere was the schism more pronounced
than in Indiana.
The Democratic state organization was disrupted and the state chairman
thrown out in the midst of the campaign. Through the summer and on until
the election in November great crowds surged and argued and fought at
all the principal street corners of Indianapolis from early morning
until night, and peaceful citizens were awakened from sleep at 5 o’clock
in the morning by wrangling newsboys, embryo politicians, debating in
loud and angry tones beneath their windows.
Many Democrats who had opposed the free silver men before the convention
and remained within the party during the campaign found themselves the
object of suspicion and distrust. Some of these stoically maintained
silence. Others tried to make their party loyalty beyond question by
promptly reversing themselves on the platform.
“Where are you going?” asked a friend of the eloquent Frank B. Burke,
then United States district attorney.
“I am going down to Jeffersonville to answer an absolutely unanswerable
speech against free silver made down there two weeks ago by a man named
Burke,” drawled the district attorney without a smile.
Many, long prominent in the party councils, openly espoused the cause of
Palmer and Buckner. Some crossed the twilight zone into the Republican
party, where most of them remained.
The one Democrat in Indiana who had fought for gold whose fidelity to
the party was never questioned after the Chicago convention spoke was
John W. Kern.
He had made it clear in the English Opera House speech that he would
abide by the will of the majority. Believing as he did that the public
interest is wrapped up in the success of the general underlying
principles of the Democratic party, he was unwilling, because of his
disagreement with some one plank in the platform in any one campaign to
be a party to the wrecking of the organization. That alone, and his
willingness to abide by the will of the majority, would have kept him
within the party and at its service.
But it was not long until he had other grounds for actively espousing
the cause of the party under the leadership of Mr. Bryan. The instant
rallying of the Black Horse Cavalry of the special interests against
him, the methods of open intimidation and coercion of workingmen, the
political blackmailing of bank depositors, the collection and
distribution of a corruption fund never before thought of in American
history soon gave to the conflict the aspect of a battle between
plutocracy and democracy. The silver question became a mere incident in
the struggle. It carried with it other issues to which he was ardently
attached--the income tax, the popular election of senators, the
protection of workingmen from the coercion of their employers at the
polls, the correction of the evils of the injunction. On the broader
issues of that campaign he threw himself with his customary zest into
the fight. Early in the campaign he met Mr. Bryan for the first time.
In his interview he made it bluntly known that before the convention he
had fought against silver, and his frankness and directness at that time
so won the confidence and respect of The Commoner that he said he “could
ask no stronger support.” He emerged from the campaign stronger with the
masses of the party than ever before, and more than ever convinced that
in view of the sinister trend of the times the wrecking of the party
would have been one of the greatest tragedies in American history.