Hot Time in the Old Town - Edward Kohn [8]
IN 1894 BRYAN lost a bid for the Senate, and by 1895 he had become the political editor for the Omaha World-Herald. Bryan used his job as a forum for his ideas and maintained his place as a leader of the silver forces. Like the rest of the country, Bryan looked ahead to the political showdown of 1896. With Cleveland stepping down after two nonconsecutive terms, Republicans, Democrats, and even Populists would be vying for power, while within the Democratic Party, silver advocates sought to place a bimetallism plank in the party’s platform.
In July 1896, when the Democrats gathered in Chicago for their convention, Bryan brought his wife along, just in case he won the presidential nomination. Far from being a dark horse, Bryan was recognized as one of the leading contenders for the nomination, with the Chicago Tribune predicting he would be the nominee. July 9 of the weeklong convention was the day set aside for the platform debate on the money issue. As this was not only an important issue nationwide but also the most important issue splitting the Democrats since 1893, the speeches this day were widely anticipated and closely watched.
Bryan, having already established a reputation for oratory, was given a place of honor in the debate and allowed to give the last speech. Democrats in Chicago dozed through the series of poor speeches that preceded Bryan’s and waited for the fireworks. He did not disappoint, giving one of the greatest speeches in American history, replying to the Democratic gold delegates and their defense of American business interests.
You come to us 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 this country. . . .
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!
With these final words of the speech, Bryan spread his arms wide, like Christ on the cross.
The delegates went wild. The convention responded to the speech with a roar “like one great burst of artillery,” as one newspaperman described it. The next day Bryan was named the Democratic nominee. The silver Democrats had prevailed.
The telegraph wires to Chicago hummed with congratulatory telegrams. “Thank God we are to have a President who knows that the western boundary of our country is beyond the Mississippi,” wrote former Colorado governor Alva Adams. “Every member of the Nebraskas [sic] wild west exhibition including Indians and representatives of all foreign nations send congratulation to the boy orator of the Platte and the young Giant of the west,” wrote William “Buffalo Bill” Cody.
Joy seemed widespread throughout the West. Nebraska congressman J. H. Broady tried to capture the scene in Bryan’s hometown: “All Lincoln rejoicing whistles blowing bells ringing and bonfires burning in pride of your genius which rises with the mantle of Jefferson in a blaze of oratory unsurpassed in all the ages and moves towards the chair once occupied by him, for whom this city is named.”
Two weeks later in St. Louis, the People’s Party also nominated Bryan for president, yet, peculiarly, with an alternate vice presidential nominee. The Populists held no love for the Democrats and stood for a different vice president as a means of maintaining their party’s independence. The question of vice presidents reflected the Populist dilemma. The Democratic nominee was Arthur Sewall, who hailed