Hot Time in the Old Town - Edward Kohn [110]
After spending only three days at home in Lincoln, Bryan left for the longest of his campaign trips, this time leaving his wife at home. Mary was still a mother first, a candidate’s wife second, and she insisted on staying at home as the children began a new term of school that fall. The candidate acknowledged his wife’s value to him and to the campaign. “I had found her a great aid in my travels because she could assist in meeting the reception committees,” he later wrote, “and thus give me more rest between stations. And then, too, she was able to insist upon more reasonable hours and greater freedom from interruption than I was able to do.” Absent from Bryan’s evaluation were his wife’s charm, grace, and popularity on the campaign trail and the kind words reserved for her even by the most hostile presses of the East. If in 1896 Bryan revolutionized the American presidential campaign by barnstorming around the country, giving speeches in scores of towns to tens of thousands of citizens, Mary Bryan revolutionized the role of the candidate’s wife. She shook hands, gave receptions, and spoke to the press, all the while smiling as the umpteenth person of the day squeezed her bruised hand.
Bryan’s autumn trip took him through the Upper South, through Missouri, Kentucky, Tennessee, and North Carolina, before arriving in Washington, DC. After a side trip to Baltimore, Bryan headed once again toward the Northeast, traveling to Wilmington, Philadelphia, and Brooklyn. At Yale University, constant catcalls and shouts of “McKinley” interrupted Bryan’s speech. Bryan traveled to Boston and farther into New England before returning to New York City.
On September 29, Bryan stopped in Manhattan to give a speech in Tammany Hall, which was so packed with spectators and so poorly ventilated that the candidate almost collapsed. A later speech had to be canceled. Once again, New York had not treated the Nebraskan very well. In his short speech he made no mention of his previous visit to New York that sultry August. Before leaving, he visited the Bryan and Sewall Campaign Club, which, according to a July telegram, had been established with a membership of 635. Bryan claimed that this club “became a powerful influence in the campaign” under the direction of Congressman William Sulzer. Then where had its 635 members been in August when Bryan visited the city? Why had they not welcomed the Bryans when their boat ferried them across the Hudson from New Jersey or when they arrived at the home of William St. John? In later years the very value of such clubs was to facilitate mobilization of large crowds for campaign events. Either Sulzer and St. John had no communication concerning the August Bryan visit, or this simply reflected another display of political ignorance by St. John.
From New York Bryan made a 570-mile trip to West Virginia, before heading to the Dakotas, Minnesota, and Michigan, exactly the states where Mark Hanna hoped Theodore Roosevelt would counteract the Democratic candidate’s influence. It worked, as on election day Bryan lost the states where Roosevelt campaigned. A large sweep through the Midwest completed the 18,000 miles Bryan traveled during the campaign. With the Northeast almost certainly lost to McKinley, the Bryan campaign pinned its hopes on success in the key states of Illinois, Ohio, Indiana, and Michigan. But the enormity of Bryan’s New York failure allowed Mark Hanna to firmly shift the Republican focus to the midwestern battleground states. Of the eight states he passed through on