Historica Wiki
Historica Wiki
Advertisement
William Jennings Bryan

William Jennings Bryan (19 March 1860 – 26 July 1925) was Secretary of State of the United States from 5 March 1913 to 9 June 1915 (succeeding Philander C. Knox and preceding Robert Lansing); he previously served in the US House of Representatives (D-NE 1) from 4 March 1891 to 3 March 1895 (succeeding William James Connell and preceding Jesse Burr Strode). Bryan was best-known for his Democratic presidential bids in 1896, 1900, and 1908, during which he presided over the Democratic Party's leftward shift. Bryan introduced social liberalism to the party during the economic panic of the 1890s, championing the working-class and rural America and bimetallism against the pro-gold standard, moneyed interests in both the Republican and Democratic parties. His takeover of the party, aided by the Populist Party, resulted in the Gold Democrats leaving the party, and, by 1902, the conservative and pro-business Bourbon Democrats had met their demise due to Bryan and Woodrow Wilson's rebellion. While Bryan was unsuccessful in all three presidential bids, he effectively transformed the Democratic Party (apart from the white supremacist Southern Democrats) into a liberal and interventionist political party, while his Republican counterpart William McKinley presided over the growth of his own party's conservative wing.

Biography[]

William Jennings Bryan was born in Salem, Illinois on 19 March 1860, the son of state senator Silas Bryan and Mariah Elizabeth Jennings. From 1883 to 1887, Bryan practiced law after graduating from the Northwestern University School of Law, and he moved to Lincoln, Nebraska as the city rapidly expanded during the late 1880s. Like his father, he was originally a Jeffersonian, limited-government conservative, but he later came to support bimetallism, government intervention on behalf of the masses, agrarianism, and social liberalism.

Cross of Gold

Populist Democrats carrying Bryan on their shoulders, 1896

In 1890, he was elected to the US House of Representatives to represent Nebraska's 1st congressional district as a Democrat. In 1896, the great orator Bryan ran as a "dark horse" candidate during the Democratic presidential primaries, and his "cross of gold" speech attacking the gold standard made him a hero for the Democrats; he was carried on the shoulders of delegates to the convention after his amazing speech. Seen as the perfect candidate to lead change in America, Bryan was chosen as the Democratic presidential nominee in 1896, but he was defeated by the Republican nominee William McKinley, who won 23 states to Bryan's 22 (Bryan won 46.70% of the popular vote); McKinley had convinced enough voters that bimetallism and inflation would only exacerbate the worsening economy. Bryan was opposed to militarism, but he supported President McKinley's leadership during the Spanish-American War, as Spain's oppression of the peoples of Cuba and the Philippines went against his liberal beliefs. However, he opposed the annexation of the Philippines and American imperialism, and he ran in the 1900 election. He was defeated by McKinley again, and he was defeated by Republican presidential nominee William Howard Taft in 1908.

Bryan would be elevated to a position of considerable power when President Woodrow Wilson nominated him as Secretary of State in 1913, and he supported American military intervention in the Mexican Revolution in 1914. In 1915, he resigned from this post in protest about the hypocrisy of Wilson after the sinking of the RMS Lusitania, as he was shocked that Wilson would care about the drowning of a few American citizens without caring about starving an entire country, Germany. Afterwards, Bryan would support Prohibition and moralism, and he supported the anti-evolution Scopes Trial of 1925. He died just five days after the trial was concluded.

Advertisement