July 9, 1896: The Cross of Gold Speech

July 9, 1896, 125 years ago: William Jennings Bryan delivers the "Cross of Gold Speech." It becomes a landmark in the history of American politics.

The Coinage Act of 1873 eliminated the standard silver dollar from American money, and was one of the causes of the Panic of 1873, leading to the worst depression the country had yet seen, lasting 5 years. In 1890, the Sherman Silver Purchase Act led to the Panic of 1893, causing an even deeper depression, which in turn caused great labor strife as it bottomed out in 1894. As 1896, and that year's Presidential election, dawned, the depression was still going.

Some politicians suggested that coining silver in a ratio of 16 to 1 -- 16 silver coins for every 1 gold coin -- would put money back in the pockets of the poor and the middle class. (Note the time of day on this post: 12:44, or 16 to 1.) There was just one problem: America did not have a liberal party at the time. The Democratic Party had grown conservative following the Presidency of Andrew Jackson that ended in 1837. And the Republican Party had grown conservative when they saw how much money was being made in railroads, mines and munitions as a result of the Union effort in the American Civil War.

There were minor parties with liberal pretentions, including the Populist Party. In 1892, their candidate for President, James B. Weaver, had won 5 States with 22 Electoral Votes, all in the West: Kansas, Colorado, Nevada, Idaho and North Dakota.

As so often happens when a third party makes some inroads, one of the two major parties takes on its ideas. This time, it was the Democrats, particularly in the urban Northeast and the rural West, who liked the idea of "free silver" and "bimetallism" (coining money in both gold and silver).

And one of their leaders was William Jennings Bryan, age 36, just barely old enough according to the Constitution to serve as President of the United States. He had been elected to the House of Representatives from a seat in Nebraska in 1890 and re-elected in 1892. But with the Democrats holding the White House through President Grover Cleveland, they were blamed for the depression (which they hadn't caused: "Sherman" was Senator John Sherman of Ohio, a Republican, and the brother of Civil War General William Tecumseh Sherman), and they took the biggest loss in terms of numbers in Congressional history in 1894.

Bryan was one of the Congressmen who lost his seat. But with a strong voice, necessary in those days before sound recordings and microphones became common, the man known as the Boy Orator of the Platte remained one of the Democrats' most sought-after speakers. And he was named as a Delegate to the 1896 Democratic National Convention, at the Chicago Coliseum.

President Cleveland and the aforementioned President Jackson are the only men to win the popular vote in 3 Presidential elections. Jackson finished 1st in both the popular vote and the Electoral Vote in 1824, but didn't get a majority of the Electoral Vote, and ended up losing to John Quincy Adams. He then definitively defeated Adams in 1828, and was re-elected in 1832.

Cleveland ran 3 times, and never got a majority of the popular vote, but got a plurality all 3 times. He got a majority of the Electoral Vote in 1884, finished 2nd to Benjamin Harrison in 1888, and regained the Presidency (the only ex-President ever to do so) by beating Harrison in 1892.

No President had ever served 3 terms. Cleveland believed he could get the Democratic nomination in 1896, but not that he could win the general election. While it wouldn't have been 3 consecutive terms, many people would have held his bid for a 3rd term, as well as his handling of the economy, against him. So he didn't run.

At the time, winning the Democratic nomination took a 2/3rds vote of the Convention delegates, meaning that "the Solid South" had a virtual veto on any candidate. So any candidate who didn't pander to Southern wishes on agriculture (must support it) and civil rights (must oppose it) had no chance. This rule wouldn't be changed for 40 years.

But the South did favor free silver. It was the Northeast, where most of the country's money was, that wanted to maintain the total gold standard. On July 9, the Convention's 3rd day, Senator William Vilas of Wisconsin gave a speech supporting the gold standard and defending President Cleveland, in the hopes of gaining the support of Cleveland's allies, and maybe of Cleveland himself, who was not in attendance. (That was normal for the time: Men wanted to be seen as being asked to be President, rather than asking for it themselves, so no candidate, not even a President running for re-election, attended a Convention.)

Vilas' speech was well-received. The next one was not: William E. Russell, a former Governor of Massachusetts, also spoke in favor of gold, but was ill, and couldn't make himself heard across the Coliseum hall. Just 7 days later, only 39 years old, he was dead from a bad heart. (A foreshadowing of what would happen to the much-older Bryan himself after the "Scopes Monkey Trial.")

Bryan followed him to the podium, and waited for the applause to fade. He said, "I would be presumptuous, indeed, to present myself against the distinguished gentlemen to whom you have listened if this were a mere measuring of abilities. But this is not a contest between persons. The humblest citizen in all the land, when clad in the armor of a righteous cause, is stronger than all the hosts of error. I come to speak to you in defense of a cause as holy as the cause of liberty: The cause of humanity."

He spoke for 35 minutes -- hardly unusual for a Convention speech, then or now. He challenged the notion that the gold standard was good for "businessmen." He put common laborers in the class of "businessmen":

The attorney in a country town is as much a businessman as the corporation counsel in a great metropolis. The merchant at the cross-roads store is as much a businessman as the merchant of New York. The farmer who goes forth in the morning and toils all day, who begins in Spring and toils all Summer, and who by the application of brain and muscle to the natural resources of the country creates wealth, is as much a businessman as the man who goes upon the Board of Trade and bets upon the price of grain.

The miners who go down a thousand feet into the earth, or climb two thousand feet upon the cliffs, and bring forth from their hiding places the precious metals to be poured into the channels of trade are as much businessmen as the few financial magnates who, in a back room, corner the money of the world. 

Bryan thus managed to link two previously separate wings of the Democratic Party together: The urban Northeast and Midwest, largely Catholic, made up of immigrants or the children of immigrants; and the rural South and West, struggling farmers. He united them as underdogs, making the Democratic Party the party of the underdog for the 1st time since the days of Old Hickory himself, Andrew Jackson. 

Moreover, in pointing out that their requests to the establishment had fallen on deaf ears, he invoked the Declaration of Independence, written by the man who would later found the Democratic Party, Thomas Jefferson:

It is for these that we speak. We do not come as aggressors. Our war is not a war of conquest. We are fighting in the defense of our homes, our families, and posterity. We have petitioned, and our petitions have been scorned. We have entreated, and our entreaties have been disregarded. We have begged, and they have mocked when our calamity came.

We beg no longer. We entreat no more. We petition no more. We defy them!

Not since Jackson had a Democratic politician even tried to reach the people on this level. A fundamentalist Presbyterian, he closed with Biblical imagery:

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."

At the words "crown of thorns," he gestured as if he were placing such a crown on his head. At "cross of gold," he put his hands out, as if he, himself, were Christ on the Cross. As he lowered his hands, there was dead silence. He thought he had failed. He began to walk off the stage. Only then did the Delegates realize that the speech was over: They erupted in cheers, and launched a demonstration that lasted twice as long as the speech itself.

Two policemen rushed to Bryan to protect him. They need not have bothered: Delegates picked Bryan up, and paraded him around the hall as their new hero.

Still, the two-thirds rule made it impossible for such a hero to be nominated on the 1st ballot. On that ballot, 14 men got at least 1 Delegate. There were 2 with more than 100: Bryan had 137, but he trailed Richard P. Bland, with 235. Bland was a former Congressman from Missouri, who had also lost his seat in the 1894 wipeout. And he was also a silver man. So was former Governor Robert E. Pattison of Pennsylvania. (Pattison Avenue, location of the eventual South Philadelphia sports complex, was named for him.) It was clear that a silver man would win, but which one?

On the 2nd ballot, it became clear that only 6 men had a chance, but Bland and then Bryan still had the best chance. Both men gained on the 3rd ballot. But on the 4th, Bryan took the lead. Bland had peaked: On the 5th ballot, his support collapsed, nearly all of it going to Bryan, to the point where he had 2/3rds, and Pattison was now 2nd. Bryan was the nominee.

And Bryan did what had been considered unacceptable for a Presidential candidate to do before: He took his message to the people, doing his own campaigning instead of letting others do it for him, criss-crossing America and its 45 States (including the newly-admitted Utah) by train.

In contrast, the Republicans nominated the Governor of Ohio, William McKinley, dedicated to conservative principles, including the gold standard. He did it the other way around: He made the people come to him. Or, rather, his campaign manager, Ohio Republican Party boss Mark Hanna, did.

Remembering that a previous nominee from Ohio, Representative James Garfield, had received visitors to his home in the Cleveland suburbs during the 1880 campaign, and given speeches there, Hanna worked with the railroads (which supported Republicans, anyway) to hire special trains to bring tourists to Canton, and visit McKinley at his home. It became known as "the front porch campaign." (A 3rd Ohioan, Senator Warren Harding, would do it in 1920.)

McKinley seemed as sound as the money he was supporting. And Bryan's rhetoric scared as many as it thrilled. Cleveland refused to use whatever political capital he had left to support him. It was even rumored that he was one of the "Gold Democrats" who ended up voting for McKinley.

Then there was a dirty trick. In the inner cities, and in smaller factory, mill and mining towns, many workers were told by their bosses in the last week, "If Bryan wins on Tuesday, don't come in on Wednesday" -- not that they would be fired, but that the factory would have to close.

On Election Day, November 3, 1896, McKinley was elected the 25th President of the United States. He won 51 percent of the popular vote, and Bryan nearly 47. McKinley won 23 States to Bryan's 22. Those figures make the election sound close. But McKinley won bigger States than Bryan did, so he won the Electoral Vote 271-176.

The election was a turning point for the Democrats, as it made them a national pro-labor party for the 1st time in 60 years. But the benefits were long in coming, and Bryan wouldn't receive them. By 1900, the depression was over, as McKinley's policies worked. In the wake of the Spanish-American War, the Philippine Campaign and the Boxer Rebellion, anti-imperialism was the Democrats' issue, and Bryan was nominated on such a platform. McKinley rode the good economy to win by an even larger margin.

McKinley was assassinated in 1901, and his Vice President, Theodore Roosevelt, became President. He was a progressive Republican, and when he ran for a full term in 1904, the Democrats turned away from Bryan, and nominated a conservative, federal Judge Alton Parker. Roosevelt won by the biggest popular-vote landslide yet.

In 1908, Roosevelt refused to run for what would have amounted to a 3rd term, and his handpicked successor, Secretary of War William Howard Taft, was nominated. Bryan made a 3rd try, and the Taft people made campaign buttons that said, "Vote for Taft this time. You can vote for Bryan anytime." Taft won by the largest margin ever, except for Roosevelt's 4 years earlier. Bryan was falling further and further behind.

In 1912, Roosevelt was unhappy that Taft had proven to be a conservative, and ran to regain the office. This split the Republican Party, and would have seemed to be Bryan's big chance. But he neither ran nor threw his support behind anyone. Governor Woodrow Wilson of New Jersey, a progressive, won, and appointed Bryan his Secretary of State.

Wilson enacted many of the reforms Bryan wanted, but they split over foreign policy, and Bryan resigned in 1915. Wilson was re-elected in 1916. Bryan passed up the chance to run in 1920 and 1924, knowing that the tide had turned back to the Republicans, but he was preparing to run again in 1928. But he died in 1925, shortly after participating in "the Scopes Monkey Trial." He was 65 years old.

At least he had gone into a recording studio, in 1923, and put the Cross of Gold speech on a record, so that we can hear it today, if not the Delegates' demonstration that followed.

As a uniter of the urban Democrats and the rural Democrats, Bryan was a precursor to Democratic Presidents Wilson, Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman and Lyndon Johnson. But as a populist, he was also a precursor to leftists masquerading as Democrats, such as Eugene McCarthy in 1968, Ralph Nader in 2000, and Bernie Sanders in 2016. Those men failed to get the nomination, and their supporters spoiled things for both the Democrats and themselves, resulting in Republican wins.

In 1896, the populists got what they wanted, in Bryan -- and while they still lost, they did something that McCarthy and Nader failed to do, and Sanders has also, thus far, failed to do: Convince the mainstream of the party to join them.

Bryan gave the Cross of Gold speech at the 2nd of 3 buildings to bear the name of the Chicago Coliseum, on 63rd Street at Stony Island Avenue on the South Side. It didn't last long: It had opened only weeks before, and burned down the next year. The site is now part of Jackson Park.