William Jennings Bryan

Categories: 1860 births | 1925 deaths | Christian fundamentalism and evangelicalism | U.S. Democratic Party presidential nominees | U.S. Secretaries of State | American progressives | Teetotalers | People from Nebraska | Nebraska history | Baldwin, Evarts, Hoar & Sherman family

William Jennings Bryan, (March 19, 1860 – July 26, 1925) born in Salem, Illinois, was a gifted orator and three-time United States Democratic nominee for President. Bryan was trained as a lawyer at Northwestern University and received his bachelor's degree at Illinois College. He practiced law in Lincoln, Nebraska, and represented Nebraska in Congress. Bryan, a Populist, held fast to his Midwestern values throughout his life; his deeply-held religious beliefs and his consistent defense of the ordinary American earned him the moniker "the Great Commoner". He was a tireless worker for women's suffrage and Prohibition, but is probably best known today for his outspoken criticism of evolution, which culminated in the Butler Act and the Scopes Trial.

Rise to fame

After serving just two terms in the United States House of Representatives, Bryan reached the pinnacle of his political career. In the presidential election of 1896, Bryan's silver forces defeated conservative "Gold Democrats" supported by incumbent President Grover Cleveland, who did not seek renomination, to win the Democratic Party nomination for President. Just 36, the youngest major-party presidential nominee in U.S. history, Bryan managed to attract the support of mainstream Democrats as well as disaffected third party Populists and Free Silverites. Bryan actually formally received the Populist Party nomination in 1896 in addition to the Democratic nomination.

His famous "Cross of Gold" speech, delivered prior to his nomination, lambasted Eastern monied classes for supporting the gold standard at the expense of the average worker. Bryan's stance, directly opposing the conservative Cleveland, largely united splintered Democrats and won the handsome "Boy Orator of the Platte" the nomination. Bryan was said to have enjoyed this colorful nickname, until opponents ridiculed it by saying it was appropriate thing to call Bryan since the Platte River was narrow, shallow and widest at the mouth.

Bryan logged more than 18,000 miles while visiting 27 states in the campaign of 1896. The unpopularity of the incumbent party, combined with the Republican candidate's well-filled war chest, catapulted William McKinley into the White House by a margin of 271 to 176 in the electoral college. Still, Bryan's following was large enough to result in two additional runs for President. Bryan ran again and lost to McKinley and William Howard Taft in the 1900 and 1908 elections.

Secretary of State

Although Bryan never won an election after 1892, he continued to wield considerable influence. He was deeply opposed to the U.S. annexation of the Philippines as a "Commonwealth" after the Spanish-American War and the resultant Philippine-American War; he is still regarded as something of a hero in some circles in the Philippines for this stance. After helping Woodrow Wilson secure the Democratic nomination in 1912, he served as Secretary of State. A committed pacifist, Bryan resigned on June 9, 1915 over a disagreement regarding his nation's handling of the sinking of the RMS Lusitania and the push toward World War I. He was still physically active, even attempting to join the army when the U.S. entered World War I in 1917.

The Anti-Evolution Movement and the Scopes Trial

Although he moved to a large home in Florida, Bryan never retired. Always pious, during the final years of his life he was extremely active in religious organizations and devoted himself to the defense of fundamentalist Christianity. (His father, a judge, was a Baptist, and his mother converted to this faith from Methodism when Bryan was 12. He and his sister later became Presbyterians.)

By the 1920s, Bryan was among America's most outspoken critics of the theory of evolution. Echoing his earlier support of Prohibition, Bryan actively supported a constitutional amendment banning public schools from teaching evolution and several state legislatures passed anti-evolution laws after Bryan addressed them. His participation in the famous 1925 Scopes Trial served as a capstone to his career. Bryan was asked by William Bell Riley to represent the World Christian Fundamentals Association to act as counsel for the association at the trial. Political author Thomas Frank writes that Bryan's anti-evolution views are a result of his Populist idealism.
Frank suggests that Bryan's fight was really against Social Darwinism, a theory that many unfamiliar with Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection perceive to go hand in hand with social theories.

Bryan's death on July 26, 1925, only five days after the trial ended, prompted differing opinions in the newspapers of the time. Those that supported fundamentalism tended to view Bryan as the victor in his interrogation by Clarence Darrow, whilst those which leant towards the modernist view awarded the contest to Darrow and the defense team, even though the verdict had gone against them. (The conviction was eventually set aside on appeal on the grounds that the jury should have set the amount of the fine.)

Although Bryan was undoubtedly upset to some extent by Darrow's playing up of his comparative lack of scientific knowledge, his busy itinerary over the last five days of his life seems to contradict any suggestion that he was exhausted by the part he played in the trial in general or by Darrow's questioning in particular (Larson, 1997). In fact Bryan had been a diabetic for years, but had made little allowance for the fact in his energetic life style, and he made no significant attempt to control his weight, which virtually guaranteed a premature death.

Whilst the trial was still in progress, local School Superintendent Walter White proposed that Dayton should create a Christian University as a lasting memorial to Bryan. The first classes of Bryan College, took place in 1930, in the Rhea County High School building, the site of Scopes' alleged infraction of the Anti-evolution Law, until facilities were available on the campus at its current location.

War and Pacifism

Though already a national figure who had run for President, Bryan volunteered to serve in the Spanish-American War in 1898. However, he never saw combat, perhaps because Republican President William McKinley did not want to turn one of his strongest political adversaries into a war hero. Another Republican opponent of Bryan, Theodore Roosevelt, would serve in combat and would receive much renown for his participation in the Battle of San Juan Hill.

After the war, Bryan came to detest it, and the imperialism that resulted from it. Bryan would later become a pacifist, a position that made it politically impossible for him to be elected President. At the time, pacifists were generally regarded as cowards. However, Bryan became committed to pacifism only after he was too old to serve in the army and the position hurt him politically; as such, it could be seen as an act of courage. For this reason those who believe that L. Frank Baum's novel The Wonderful Wizard of Oz is actually a populist allegory consider the Cowardly Lion to represent Bryan. (The Scarecrow represents agriculture, the Tin Man represents industry, and Dorothy's slippers were, after all, made of silver in the book.

References

• Ray Ginger, William Jennings Bryan; Selections (1967)
• American Memory: Today in History: March 19
• Summer for the Gods, Edward Larson. Harvard University Press (1997)

External links

• Works by William Jennings Bryan at Project Gutenberg

• The Duel In the Shade - Darrow's examination of Bryan at the Scopes Trial
• "William Jennings Bryan" at The American Experience on PBS
• Text of Vachel Lindsay's famous poem honoring Bryan.

See also:

• U.S. presidential elections: 1896, 1900, 1908