William Jennings Bryan

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For other persons of the same name, see William Bryan.

William Jennings Bryan
41st
In office March 5, 1913 – June 9, 1915
Preceded by	Philander C. Knox
Succeeded by	Robert Lansing
In office March 4, 1891 – March 3, 1895
Preceded by	William James Connell
Succeeded by	Jesse Burr Strode
Born	March 19 1860(1860-03-19) Salem, Illinois, U.S.
Died	July 26 1925 (aged 65) Dayton, Tennessee, U.S.
Political party	Democratic
Spouse	Mary Baird Bryan
Profession	Politician, Lawyer
Religion	Presbyterian

William Jennings Bryan (March 19, 1860 – July 26, 1925) was an American lawyer, statesman, and politician. He was a three-time Democratic Party nominee for President of the United States. One of the most popular speakers in American history, he was noted for his deep, commanding voice. Bryan was a devout Presbyterian, a strong proponent of popular democracy, an outspoken critic of banks and railroads, a leader of the silverite movement in the 1890s, a dominant figure in the Democratic Party, a peace advocate, a prohibitionist, an opponent of Darwinism, and one of the most prominent leaders of Populism in late 19th- and early 20th century America. He was called "The Great Commoner" because of his total faith in the goodness and rightness of the common people. He was defeated by William McKinley in the intensely fought 1896 election and 1900 election, but retained control of the Democratic Party.

Bryan was one of the most energetic campaigners in American history, inventing the national stumping tour for presidential candidates. In his three failed presidential bids, he promoted Free Silver in 1896, anti-imperialism in 1900, and trust-busting in 1908, calling on all Democrats to renounce states rights in cases where corporations are protected, fight the trusts and big banks, and embrace populist ideas. President Woodrow Wilson appointed him Secretary of State in 1913, but Bryan resigned in protest against what he viewed as Wilson's provocative language in dealing with the Lusitania crisis in 1915. In the 1920s, he was a strong supporter of Prohibition, but is probably best known today for his crusade against Darwinism, which culminated in the Scopes Trial in 1925. He died five days after the case was decided.

Background and early career: 1860–1896

Bryan was born in Salem, Illinois, in the Little Egypt region of southern Illinois, on March 19, 1860, the son of Silas and Mary Ann Bryan.

William Jennings Bryan as a younger man.

Silas Bryan was born in Virginia, of Irish stock. He attended law school in Lebanon, Illinois and taught high school while preparing for the bar exam. While teaching there, he met, and eventually married, one of his students, Mary Elizabeth Jennings. They settled in Salem, Illinois, a young town with a population of approximately 2000. Silas Bryan, a Jacksonian Democrat, won election to the Illinois State Senate, where he knew Abraham Lincoln and Stephen Douglas. Silas lost his seat to a Republican in 1860, the year of William Jennings Bryan's birth, but quickly rebounded by winning election as a state circuit judge.

In 1866, the family moved to a 520-acre (2.1 km²) farm north of Salem, living in a ten-room house that was the envy of Marion County. Silas served as a sort of "gentleman farmer" and William Jennings Bryan grew up in this agricultural setting. In 1872, Silas left the bench to run for the House of Representatives, with the backing of the Democratic and Greenback parties, but lost to a Republican. He returned to his law practice.

Both of Bryan's parents were devout Christians. Since his father was a Baptist and his mother a Methodist, Bryan grew up attending Methodist services on Sunday mornings and Baptist services in the afternoon. In 1872, Mariah Bryan joined the Salem Baptists and the family now worshiped with the Baptists in the morning - at this point, William began spending his Sunday afternoons at the Cumberland Presbyterian Church. In 1874, at age 14, Bryan attended a revival and was baptized and joined the Cumberland Presbyterian Church. In later life, Bryan would refer to the day of his baptism as the most important day in his life, but, being raised in a devout family, at the time it caused little change in his daily routine. As an adult, Bryan left the Cumberland Presbyterian Church in favor of the larger Presbyterian Church in the United States of America.

Bryan was home schooled until age 10, finding in the Bible and McGuffey Readers the views he adhered to all his life, such as that gambling and liquor were evil and sinful. In 1874, 14-year-old Bryan was sent to Jacksonville to attend Whipple Academy, the academy attached to Illinois College. Following high school, he entered Illinois College and studied classics, graduating as valedictorian in 1881. During his time at Illinois College, Bryan was a proud member of the Sigma Pi literary society. He then moved to Chicago to study law at Union Law College.

He married Mary Baird in 1884; she became a lawyer and collaborated with him on all his speeches and writings. He practiced law in Jacksonville (1883–87), then moved to the boom city of Lincoln, Nebraska. Bryan was elected to Congress in the Democratic landslide of 1890 and reelected by 140 votes in 1892. In 1894 he ran for the Senate, but was overwhelmed in the Republican landslide.

In Bryan's first years in Lincoln, he traveled to Valentine, Nebraska on business where he formed a strong friendship with an aspiring young cattleman named James Dahlman. Over the next forty years they remained friends, with Dahlman carrying Nebraska for Bryan twice while he was state Democratic Party chairman. Even when Dahlman became closely associated with Omaha's vice elements, including the breweries, as the city's eight-term mayor, he and Bryan maintained a collegial relationship.

First battle for the White House: 1896

File:Cross cartoon.jpg

A Republican satire on Bryan's "Cross of Gold" speech.

At the 1896 Democratic National Convention, Bryan galvanized the silver forces to defeat the Bourbon Democrats, who supported incumbent President Grover Cleveland and who had long controlled the party. His famous "Cross of Gold" speech, delivered prior to voting for the presidential nominee, lambasted Eastern monied classes for supporting the gold standard at the expense of the average worker. Bryan's stance, directly opposing the conservative Cleveland and the Bourbon Democrats, united the agrarian and silver factions and won him the nomination. Just 36, the youngest presidential nominee ever, Bryan formally received the nominations of the Populist Party and the Silver Republican Party in addition to the Democratic nomination. Voters from any party could vote for him without crossing party lines, an important advantage in an era of intense party loyalty. Republicans ridiculed Bryan as a Populist. However, "Bryan's reform program was so similar to that of the Populists that he has often been mistaken for a Populist, but he remained a staunch Democrat throughout the Populist period." The Populists nominated him only once (in 1896); they refused to do so in previous and later elections mostly due to an incident that occurred during the 1896 election.

Bryan/Sewall campaign poster.

Along with nominating Bryan for president, the Populists nominated Georgia Representative Thomas E. Watson for the vice presidency, in hope Bryan would chose Watson to be his Democratic running mate as well. However, Bryan instead chose Maine industrialist and politician Arthur Sewall for the candidacy. The Populist Party was greatly disappointed in Bryan's decision and thereafter paid little attention to him.

Bryan crusaded against the gold standard and the money interests, demanding Bimetallism and "Free Silver" at a ratio of 16:1. Most leading Democratic newspapers rejected his candidacy, so he took his cause directly to several million men, women and children who flocked to hear one of his 500 speeches given in 27 states.

Bryan as Populist swallowing the Democratic party; 1896 cartoon from the Republican magazine Judge.

The Republicans nominated William McKinley on a program of prosperity through industrial growth, high tariffs and sound money (that is, gold.) Republicans discovered that, by August, Bryan was solidly ahead in the South and West, and far behind in the Northeast. But he also appeared to be ahead in the Midwest, so the Republicans concentrated their efforts there. They counter-crusaded against Bryan, warning that he was a madman—a religious fanatic surrounded by anarchists—who would wreck the economy. By late September, the Republicans felt they were ahead in the decisive Midwest and began emphasizing that McKinley would bring prosperity to every group of Americans. McKinley scored solid gains among the middle classes, factory and railroad workers, prosperous farmers and among the German Americans who rejected free silver. William McKinley won by a margin of 271 to 176 in the electoral college.

War and peace: 1898–1900

Conservatives in 1900 ridiculed Bryan's eclectic platform.

Although Bryan never won an election after 1892, he continued to dominate the Democratic party. He strongly supported going to war with Spain in 1898, and volunteered for combat, arguing that "Universal peace cannot come until justice is enthroned throughout the world. Until the right has triumphed in every land and love reigns in every heart, government must, as a last resort, appeal to force." Bryan volunteered and became colonel of a Nebraska militia regiment; he spent the war in Florida and never saw combat.

After the war, Bryan came to denounce the imperialism that resulted from it. He strongly opposed the annexation of the Philippines (though he did support the Treaty of Paris that ended the war). He ran as an anti-imperialist in 1900, finding himself in an awkward alliance with Andrew Carnegie and other millionaire anti-imperialists. Republicans mocked Bryan as indecisive, or even a coward, a theme high school history teacher Henry Littlefield claimed was echoed in the portrayal of the Cowardly Lion in The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (1900). In 1900, he combined anti-imperialism with free silver, saying:

The nation is of age and it can do what it pleases; it can spurn the traditions of the past; it can repudiate the principles upon which the nation rests; it can employ force instead of reason; it can substitute might for right; it can conquer weaker people; it can exploit their lands, appropriate their property and kill their people; but it cannot repeal the moral law or escape the punishment decreed for the violation of human rights.

Bryan giving a speech during his 1908 run for the presidency.

His stamina was evident from his schedule. In a typical day he gave four hour-long speeches and shorter talks that added up to six hours of speaking. At an average rate of 175 words a minute, he turned out 63,000 words, enough to fill 52 columns of a newspaper. (No paper printed more than a column or two.) In Wisconsin, he once made 12 speeches in 15 hours. . He held his base in the South, but lost part of the West as McKinley retained the Northeast and Midwest and rolled up a landslide.

Also, Bryan took a role in a the debate over the Philippines in 1898. Bryan was a known anti-imperialist, and had very strong beliefs about the annexation of the Philippines.

On the Chautauqua circuit: 1900–1912

Following his failed presidential bid in 1900, the 40-year-old Bryan re-examined his life and concluded that he had let his passion for politics obscure his calling as a Christian. He now prepared a number of speeches in defense of the Christian faith and hit the lecture circuit, especially the Chautauqua circuit. For the next 25+ years, Bryan would be the most popular Chautauqua speaker, delivering thousands of speeches, even while serving as secretary of state. He spoke on a wide variety of topics, but he preferred religious topics. His most popular lecture (and his personal favorite) was a lecture entitled "The Prince of Peace": in it, Bryan stressed that religion was the only solid foundation of morality, and that individual and group morality was the only foundation for peace and equality. Another famous lecture from this period, "The Value of an Ideal," was a stirring call to public service.

William Jennings Bryan addresses a crowd from a train in Utica, New York, October 21, 1908.

As early as 1905, Bryan was warning Chautauquans of the dangers of Darwinism: "The Darwinian theory represents man reaching his present perfection by the operation of the law of hate - the merciless law by which the strong crowd out and kill off the weak. If this is the law of our development then, if there is any logic that can bind the human mind, we shall turn backward to the beast in proportion as we substitute the law of love. I choose to believe that love rather than hatred is the law of development."

Bryan also now threw himself into the work of the Social Gospel. Bryan served on organizations containing a large number of theological liberals: he sat on the temperance committee of the Federal Council of Churches and on the general committee of the short-lived Interchurch World Movement.

In the years following his 1900 presidential loss, Bryan founded a weekly magazine, The Commoner, calling on Democrats to dissolve the trusts, regulate the railroads more tightly and support the Progressive Movement. He regarded prohibition as a "local" issue and did not endorse it until 1910. In London in 1906, he presented a plan to the Inter-Parliamentary Peace Conference for arbitration of disputes that he hoped would avert warfare. He tentatively called for nationalization of the railroads, then backtracked and called only for more regulation. His party nominated gold bug Alton B. Parker in 1904, but Bryan was back in 1908, losing this time to William Howard Taft.

File:WJB-fromthewarfront-1914.jpg

Cartoon depicting Secretary of State Bryan reading news from the war fronts in 1914.

Bryan's speech to the students of Washington and Lee University began the Washington & Lee Mock Convention, which still continues 100 years later.

Secretary of State: 1913–1915

After supporting Woodrow Wilson for the presidency in 1912, he was rewarded with the top job as Secretary of State. Wilson made all the major foreign policy decisions himself, only nominally consulting Bryan. Dedicated to peace (though not a pacifist), Bryan negotiated 28 treaties that promised arbitration of disputes before war broke out between that country and the United States; onto which Germany never signed. He supported American military intervention in the civil war in Mexico in 1914. Bryan resigned in June 1915 over Wilson's strong notes demanding "strict accountability for any infringement of [American] rights, intentional or incidental." He campaigned energetically for Wilson's reelection in 1916. When war finally was declared in April 1917, Bryan wrote Wilson, "Believing it to be the duty of the citizen to bear his part of the burden of war and his share of the peril, I hereby tender my services to the Government. Please enroll me as a private whenever I am needed and assign me to any work that I can do." Wilson, however, did not allow Bryan to rejoin the military and did not offer him any wartime role, so he threw his energies into successful campaigns for Constitutional amendments on prohibition and women's suffrage.

Prohibition battles: 1916–1925

Bryan moved to Florida in part to avoid the Nebraska ethnics (especially the German Americans) who were "wet" and opposed to prohibition. (Coletta 3:116). He remained as busy as ever, often filling lucrative speaking engagements. 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. After leaving the State Department, he shifted focus to social and moral issues, and to world disarmament. He refused to support the party nominee in 1920 because he was not dry enough. As one biographer explains,

“

Bryan epitomized the prohibitionist viewpoint: Protestant and nativist, hostile to the corporation and the evils of urban civilization, devoted to personal regeneration and the social gospel, he sincerely believed that prohibition would contribute to the physical health and moral improvement of the individual, stimulate civic progress, and end the notorious abuses connected with the liquor traffic. Hence he became interested when its devotees in Nebraska viewed direct legislation as a means of obtaining antisaloon laws.

”

William Jennings Bryan and wife, Mary, in New York City, June 19, 1915.

He was thus primarily interested in destroying the liquor interest, which controlled politics in many inner-city wards and seemed to be on the other side of every issue. His national campaigning helped Congress pass the 18th Amendment in 1918, which shut down all saloons starting in 1920. While prohibition was in effect, however, he did not work to secure better enforcement. He ignored the Ku Klux Klan, expecting it would soon fold. He strongly opposed wet Al Smith for the nomination in 1924 and his brother, Nebraska Governor Charles W. Bryan, was put on the ticket with John W. Davis as candidate for vice president to keep the Bryanites in line. Bryan was very close to his younger brother Charles and endorsed him for the vice presidency.

Bryan was the chief proponent of the Harrison Narcotics Tax Act, the precursor to our modern War on Drugs. However, he argued on behalf of the act's passage more on international obligation rather than on moral grounds.

Fighting Darwinism: 1918–1925

In his famous Chautauqua lecture, "The Prince of Peace," Bryan had warned of the possibility that the theory of evolution could undermine the foundations of morality. However, at this point, he concluded "While I do not accept the Darwinian theory I shall not quarrel with you about it."

This attitude changed when the horrors of the First World War convinced Bryan that Darwinism was not only a potential threat, but had in fact undermined morality. Before World War I, Bryan had been an optimist who believed that moral progress could achieve equality at home and, in the international field, peace between all the nations of the world. World War I convinced him that this optimism was misplaced and that moral progress had ground to a complete halt.

In concluding that Darwinism was responsible for the immorality of the present age, Bryan was heavily influenced by two books. The first was Headquarters Nights: A Record of Conversations and Experiences at the Headquarters of the German Army in Belgium and France by Vernon Kellogg (1917), which forwarded that most German military leaders were committed Darwinists who were skeptical of Christianity. The second was The Science of Power by Benjamin Kidd (1918), which argued that German nationalism, materialism, and militarism could be attributed to the philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche, which it claimed in turn was the logical outworking of the Darwinian hypothesis.

Charles W. and William J. Bryan.

In 1920, Bryan told the World Brotherhood Congress that Darwinism was "the most paralyzing influence with which civilization has had to deal in the last century" and that Nietzsche, in carrying Darwinism to its logical conclusion, had "promulgated a philosophy that condemned democracy. . . denounced Christianity. . . denied the existence of God, overturned all concepts of morality. . . and endeavored to substitute the worship of the superhuman for the worship of Jehovah."

However, it was not until 1921 that Bryan saw the threat to morality posed by Darwinism as a major internal threat to the US. The major study which seemed to convince Bryan of this was James H. Leuba's The Belief in God and Immortality, a Psychological, Anthropological and Statistical Study (1916). In this study, Leuba showed that a considerable number of college students lost their faith during the four years they spent in college. Bryan was horrified that the next generation of American leaders might have the degraded sense of morality which he believed had prevailed in Germany and caused the Great War. Bryan decided it was time to act and launched his massive anti-evolution campaign.

File:EverHopeful-WmChasBryan-1924.jpg

Ever Hopeful
A November 1924 cartoon depicts Bryan with his brother, Charles, sitting on a log marked "Almost the Solid South" looking at the sun marked "1928" where more hope might come for them. Charles unsuccessfully ran for the vice presidency in the 1924 election having lost a number of southern states.

The campaign kicked off when Union Theological Seminary in Virginia invited Bryan to deliver the James Sprunt Lectures in October 1921. The heart of the lectures was a lecture entitled "The Origin of Man," in which Bryan addressed what he saw as the question foundational to all other moral and political questions: what is the role of man in the universe and what is the purpose of man? For Bryan, the Bible was absolutely central to answering this question, and moral responsibility and the spirit of brotherhood could only rest on belief in God.

The Sprunt lectures were published as In His Image, and sold over 100,000 copies, while "The Origin of Man" was published separately as The Menace of Darwinism and also sold very well.

Bryan was worried that Darwinism was making grounds not only in the universities, but also within the church itself. Many colleges were still church-affiliated at this point. The developments of 19th century liberal theology, and higher criticism in particular, had left the door open to the point where many clergymen were willing to embrace Darwinism and claimed that it was not contradictory with their being Christians. Determined to put an end to this, Bryan, who had long served as a Presbyterian elder, decided to run for the position of Moderator of the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in the USA, which was at the time embroiled in the Fundamentalist-Modernist Controversy. (Under presbyterian church governance, clergy and laymen are equally represented in the General Assembly, and the post of Moderator is open to any member of General Assembly.) Bryan's main competition in the race was the Rev. Charles F. Wishart, president of the College of Wooster, who had loudly endorsed the teaching of Darwinism in the college. Bryan lost to Wishart by a vote of 451-427. Bryan then failed in a proposal to cut off funds to schools where Darwinism was taught. Instead the General Assembly announced disapproval of materialistic (as opposed to theistic) evolution.

For all of Bryan's crusade against Darwinism, he was not nearly as much of a fundamentalist as many modern day creationists. For example, from page 13 of Ronald L. Number's Harvard University Press book on creationism's history:

William Jennings Bryan, the much misunderstood leader of the post–World War I antievolution crusade, not only read the Mosaic “days” as geological “ages” but allowed for the possibility of organic evolution—so long as it did not impinge on the supernatural origin of Adam and Eve.

Therefore, Bryan is more accurately described as a "day-age creationist."

Scopes Trial: 1925

In addition to his unsuccessful advocacy of banning the teaching of evolution in church-run universities, Bryan also actively lobbied in favor of state laws banning public schools from teaching evolution. The legislatures of several southern states proved more receptive to his anti-evolution message than the Presbyterian Church had, and consequently passed laws banning the teaching of evolution in public schools after Bryan addressed them. A prominent example was the Butler Act of 1925, making it unlawful in Tennessee to teach that mankind evolved from lower life forms.

Bryan's participation in the highly publicized 1925 Scopes Trial served as a capstone to his career. He was asked by William Bell Riley to represent the World Christian Fundamentals Association as counsel at the trial. During the trial Bryan took the stand and was questioned by defense lawyer Clarence Darrow about his views on the Bible. Biologist Stephen Jay Gould has speculated that Bryan's antievolution views were a result of his Populist idealism and suggests that Bryan's fight was really against Social Darwinism. Others, such as biographer Michael Kazin, reject that conclusion based on Bryan's failure during the trial to attack the eugenics in the textbook, Civic Biology. The national media reported the trial in great detail, with H. L. Mencken using Bryan as a symbol of Southern ignorance and anti-intellectualism.

Bryan died on July 26 1925, only five days after the trial ended, but any speculations his death may have been tied to the trial are unfounded. Immediately after the trial, he continued to edit and deliver speeches, traveling hundreds of miles that week. On Sunday, he drove from Chattanooga to Dayton to attend a church service, ate a meal and died while sleeping that afternoon. School Superintendent Walter White proposed that Dayton should create a Christian college as a lasting memorial to Bryan; fund raising was successful and Bryan College opened in 1930. Bryan is buried in Arlington National Cemetery. His tombstone reads "He kept the Faith."

Popular image

The 1950s play by Jerome Lawrence and Robert Edwin Lee, Inherit the Wind, is heavily based on the Scopes Trial, though it actually was written as a response to McCarthyism. A populist thrice-defeated Presidential candidate from Nebraska named Matthew Harrison Brady comes to a small town named Hillsboro in the deep south to help prosecute a young teacher for teaching Darwin to his schoolchildren. He is opposed by a famous liberal lawyer, Henry Drummond, and chastised by a cynical newspaperman as the trial assumes a national profile. However, the play is often criticized for severely mischaracterizing Bryan. (It should be noted, however, that the character of Brady himself is somewhat sympathetic; it is the townspeople supporting him who are drawn in a negative light.)

Bryan also appears as a character in Douglas Moore's 1956 opera, The Ballad of Baby Doe and is briefly mentioned in John Steinbeck's East of Eden. He was also mentioned on the May 23, 2007 episode of The Daily Show when fictional comedian Geoffrey Foxworthington (a knock off of Jeff Foxworthy) quotes, "If your dream Vice President is William Jennings Bryan, you might be a puzzlewit."

Legacy

File:WJB-Fairviewstatue.jpg

Statue of Bryan outside his home "Fairview" in Lincoln, Nebraska.

Statue of Bryan on the lawn of the Rhea County, Tennessee courthouse in Dayton, Tennessee.

Kazin (2006) considers him the first of the 20th century "celebrity politicians" better known for their personalities and communications skills than their political views. However, author Shannon Jones (2006) writes that one of the few topics touched on by historians is Bryan's apparent support of American racism, and never took a principled stand against white supremacy in the South. Jones contends it is not hard to understand why because, "The ruling elite in the South, the remnants of the old southern slaveholding oligarchy, formed a critical base of the Democratic Party. This Party had defended slavery and secession and had led the struggle against post-Civil War Reconstruction. It had opposed granting suffrage to freed slaves and generally opposed all progressive reforms aimed at alleviating the oppression of blacks and poor whites. No politician could hope for national leadership in the Democratic Party, let alone expect to win the presidency, by attacking the system of racial oppression in the South."

Alan Wolfe has concluded that Bryan's "legacy remains complicated." Form and content mix uneasily in Bryan's politics. The content of his speeches. . . leads in a direct line to the progressive reforms adopted by 20th century Democrats. But the form his actions took—-a romantic invocation of the American past, a populist insistence on the wisdom of ordinary folk, a faith-based insistence on sincerity and character.

Bryan County, Oklahoma was named after him.

Secondary sources

Biographies

• Cherny, Robert W. A Righteous Cause: The Life of William Jennings Bryan (1994).
• Coletta; Paolo E. William Jennings Bryan 3 vols. (1964), the most detailed biography.
• Glad, Paul W. The Trumpet Soundeth: William Jennings Bryan and His Democracy 1896-1912 (1966).
• Hibben; Paxton. The Peerless Leader, William Jennings Bryan (1929).
• Kazin, Michael. A Godly Hero: The Life of William Jennings Bryan (2006).
• Koenig, Louis W. Bryan: A Political Biography of William Jennings Bryan (1971).
• Werner; M. R. Bryan (1929).

Specialized studies

• Barnes, James A. "Myths of the Bryan Campaign," Mississippi Valley Historical Review, 34 (December 1947) on 1896 campaign; online in JSTOR.
• Cherny, Robert W. "William Jennings Bryan and the Historians." Nebraska History 1996 77(3-4): 184-193. ISSN 0028-1859. Analysis of the historiography.
• Edwards, Mark. "Rethinking the Failure of Fundamentalist Political Antievolutionism after 1925" Fides et Historia 2000 32(2): 89-106. ISSN 0884-5379 Argues that fundamentalists thought they had won Scopes trial but death of Bryan shook their confidence.
• Glad, Paul W. McKinley, Bryan and the People (1991), on 1896.
• Hohenstein, Kurt. "William Jennings Bryan and the Income Tax: Economic Statism and Judicial Usurpation in the Election of 1896" Journal of Law & Politics 2000 16(1): 163-192. ISSN 0749-2227
• Jeansonne, Glen. "Goldbugs, Silverites, and Satirists: Caricature and Humor in the Presidential Election of 1896." Journal of American Culture 1988 11(2): 1-8. ISSN 0191-1813
• Larson, Edward. Summer for the Gods (1997), on the Scopes Trial.
• Longfield, Bradley J. "For Church and Country: the Fundamentalist-modernist Conflict in the Presbyterian Church." Journal of Presbyterian History 2000 78(1): 34-50. ISSN 0022-3883 Puts Scopes in larger religious context.
• Mahan, Russell L. "William Jennings Bryan and the Presidential Campaign of 1896" White House Studies 2003 3(2): 215-227. ISSN 1535-4768
• Murphy, Troy A. "William Jennings Bryan: Boy Orator, Broken Man, and the 'Evolution' of America's Public Philosophy." Great Plains Quarterly 2002 22(2): 83-98. ISSN 0275-7664
• Willard H. Smith. "William Jennings Bryan and the Social Gospel," The Journal of American History, Vol. 53, No. 1. (Jun., 1966), pp. 41-60. in JSTOR
• Taylor, Jeff. Where Did the Party Go?: William Jennings Bryan, Hubert Humphrey, and the Jeffersonian Legacy (2006), on Bryan's place in Democratic Party history and ideology.
• Wood, L. Maren. "The Monkey Trial Myth: Popular Culture Representations of the Scopes Trial" Canadian Review of American Studies 2002 32(2): 147-164. ISSN 0007-7720

Primary sources

• Bryan, Mary Baird, ed. The Memoirs of William Jennings Bryan (1925).
• Bryan, William Jennings. The First Battle: A Story of the Campaign of 1896 (1897), speeches from 1896 campaign.
• Bryan, William Jennings. Under Other Flags: Travels, Lectures, Speeches (1905) Fifth edition.
• Ginger, Ray, ed. William Jennings Bryan; Selections (1967).
• Whicher, George F., ed. William Jennings Bryan and the Campaign of 1896 (1953), primary and secondary sources.

See also

• History of creationism
• Fundamentalist-Modernist Controversy
• Political interpretations of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz
• History of the United States Democratic Party
• Progressive Movement
• U.S. presidential elections of 1896, 1900 and 1908.

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to:

William Jennings Bryan

• William Jennings Bryan at the Biographical Directory of the United States Congress
• Political Cartoon, on 1900 presidential campaign; Harper's Weekly "He Made It All By Himself" [1]
• American Memory: Today in History: March 19
• Works by William Jennings Bryan. Project Gutenberg
• The Duel In the Shade - Darrow's examination of Bryan at the Scopes Trial
• "William Jennings Bryan" at The American Experience: Woodrow Wilson on PBS
• "William Jennings Bryan" at The American Experience: The Monkey Trial on PBS
• Washington & Lee Mock Convention
• Text of Vachel Lindsay's famous poem honoring Bryan.
• William Jennings Bryan cylinder recordings, from the Cylinder Preservation and Digitization Project at the University of California, Santa Barbara Library.
• Michael Kazin: "A Godly Hero" interview about Jennings on The Diane Rehm Show
• "The Deity of Christ" - paper by Bryan on the subject
• Information on Bryan's thought and influence, including quotations from his speeches and writings.
• Author Shannon Brown examines Bryan's position on racism.
• William Jennings Bryan at the Internet Movie Database
• William Jennings Bryan: The Ideal Republic (listen online)
• Side-by-side comparison of the Scopes trial with the film version of Inherit the Wind
• William Jennings Bryan papers at Nebraska State Historical Society
• William Jennings Bryan at Find A Grave

References

ISBN links support NWE through referral fees

Political offices
Preceded by: Philander C. Knox	United States Secretary of State March 5, 1913 – June 9, 1915	Succeeded by: Robert Lansing
United States House of Representatives
Preceded by: William James Connell	Member from Nebraska's 1st congressional district March 4, 1891 – March 3, 1895	Succeeded by: Jesse Burr Strode
Party Political Offices
Preceded by: James Baird Weaver	Populist Party presidential candidate 1896	Succeeded by: Wharton Barker
Preceded by: Grover Cleveland	Democratic Party presidential candidate 1896, 1900	Succeeded by: Alton B. Parker
Preceded by: Alton B. Parker	Democratic Party Presidential nominee 1908	Succeeded by: Woodrow Wilson

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