Reading Like a Historian Populism and the Election of 1896 Answers
As the presidential election year of 1896 began, things were looking rosy for the Republicans. Merely the emergence of a brash, young politician, William Jennings Bryan, presently turned the tide. Bryan's campaign laid blank the diverging interests of those whose livelihoods were linked to urban institutions and those who lived past the land in rural America.
With the nation mired in the aftermath of a serious economic depression and a deeply unpopular Democrat incumbent—Grover Cleveland—in the White House, the GOP had surged dorsum in the most recent midterms to win command of both the House and Senate. Governor William McKinley of Ohio hands won the Republican presidential nomination, and seemed poised for a smooth ride to the White House on his platform of economic protectionism and back up for the gold standard, which divers the value of the nation's currency in terms of how much gold it had in reserve.
Just in an unexpected plough of events, the immature Autonomous Nebraska lawyer and former congressman Bryan challenged McKinley in 1896. Bryan's appeal to America'due south farmers and the working class, his passionate support of the free argent movement and his powerful speaking way galvanized both disaffected Democrats and members of the People'due south (or Populist) Political party, turning the election into one of the well-nigh hard-fought and consequential in the nation'due south history.
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Backdrop: Panic of 1893
The boxing betwixt McKinley and Bryan took identify during an economic downturn that had begun in 1893, when two of the nation's biggest employers, the Philadelphia and Reading Railroad and the National Cordage Company, complanate, setting off a stock marketplace panic. Thousands of businesses closed, and the nation suffered more than than 10 percent unemployment for more than five straight years.
While President Cleveland favored the gold standard, many in the Populist Party and the rural, agrarian wing of the Democratic Party—including many farmers in the Due south and West—supported the Free Silver Motility. Rather than rely on gold to back the nation's coin supply, they believed the land should utilise silver, which was much more abundant at the fourth dimension. This would inflate the currency, increasing the prices farmers would receive for their crops and helping them pay back their debts more hands.
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William Jennings Bryan and the 'Cross of Gold'
William Jennings Bryan was a ascendant force in the populist wing of the Autonomous party in 1896.
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When the Democrats convened in Chicago to choose their presidential candidate in July 1896, they repudiated Cleveland and inverse courses dramatically, making free silvery a cardinal plank of their platform. At 36 years quondam, with two terms in Congress and a failed 1894 run for Senate nether his belt, Bryan was the party's virtually outspoken and constructive champion of silverish. During the convention, he delivered what would become one of the about famous political orations in U.S. history, known as the "Cross of Gold" speech.
Bryan's eloquent call for an stop to regime favoritism toward business interests and the wealthy at the expense of farmers and the working class, and his defense of agrestal republic against a backdrop of the nation's growing urbanization, would resonate for generations to come. The nigh electric moment of his speech came at the end, when he drew on his evangelical Christian religion.
"We will answer their demand for a aureate standard by saying to them: Yous shall not press downwardly upon the brow of labor this crown of thorns," he cried, placing an imaginary crown on his head. "You shall non excruciate mankind upon a cross of aureate."
The crowd of more than twenty,000 at the Chicago Coliseum went wild, and Bryan went on to assure the nomination, condign the youngest presidential nominee in history. The Populists, who had won several states in the 1892 election, as well nominated Bryan, who shared their free silver views.
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Bryan'southward Barnstorming vs. McKinley'due south Front Porch
William McKinley, the 25th President of the United states of america, on the porch of his home in County, Ohio. During the 1896 election, McKinley campaigned from his porch while his opponent, William Jennings Bryan, toured the land.
Spencer Arnold Collection/Hulton Archive/Getty Images
Bryan traveled nearly twenty,000 miles past rail effectually the country during his campaign and gave hundreds of speeches, often out of the dorsum of his railroad automobile. Huge crowds greeted him, drawn past his oratorical skills and the passion he inspired in his supporters.
For his office, McKinley stayed home in Canton, Ohio, addressing large delegations of Republican supporters from his front end porch. His entrada mastermind, Cleveland man of affairs Mark Hanna, attracted 750,000 people to Canton during the entrada and enlisted thousands of speakers to stump elsewhere on McKinley's behalf. Foreshadowing a new style of campaign financing, Hanna solicited major contributions from fellow industrialists, raising some $iv one thousand thousand in total.
In the end, despite Bryan'southward all-time efforts, his campaign failed to broaden its back up beyond its Populist, agrarian Autonomous base of operations. More conservative Democrats, who favored the aureate standard, carve up from the party to nominate their own National (Gold) Democratic candidate, or even threw their support to McKinley. Republicans managed to attract some urban progressive voters by attacking Bryan as a religious fanatic, in add-on to painting a dire flick of what abandoning the aureate standard would mean for the economic system.
McKinley's Decisive Victory
On Ballot Day, voter turnout topped 79 percentage, reflecting the high stakes of the contest. McKinley won some 600,000 more popular votes than Bryan, the widest margin since 1872, while his win in the balloter college (271 to 176) was even more decisive. In addition to his core support in the urban Northeast, McKinley gained forcefulness from prosperous Midwestern farmers, industrial workers, and many indigenous voters. For his part, Bryan swept most of the South, the simply region of the country where the economy remained predominantly agricultural; he also did well among farmers in the Due west and Midwest.
Like the elections of 1800, 1860 and 1932, the presidential election of 1896 marked a primal shift in American politics, and the emergence of a new political reality to reflect the nation'due south changed circumstances. McKinley's win began an era of Republican authority, and economical prosperity, that would last for nearly four decades. It besides spelled the showtime of the end for the Populist Party, which didn't dissolve entirely only would never regain its quondam level of success.
Perhaps nearly importantly, the 1896 election marked the decisive triumph of the nation's urban interests—banking, manufacturing and manufacture—over its agrarian past. With Americans migrating to cities at a rapidly increasing rate in the last decade of the 19th century, Bryan would be the concluding candidate to run by appealing exclusively to the country'due south rural population.
Bryan ran for president and lose twice more, in 1900 and 1908, before serving as secretary of state under Woodrow Wilson, the era's but Democratic president. Only before his decease, the man many called "the Great Commoner" employed his oratorical skills i last time, arguing against the teaching of evolution in the Scopes Trial.
Source: https://www.history.com/news/rural-urban-divide-1896-election