William Jennings Bryan
William Jennings Bryan | |
---|---|
Jesse Burr Strode | |
Personal details | |
Born | Salem, Illinois, U.S. | March 19, 1860
Died | July 26, 1925 Dayton, Tennessee, U.S. | (aged 65)
Resting place | Arlington National Cemetery |
Political party | Democratic |
Other political affiliations | Populist |
Spouse | |
Children | 3, including Ruth |
Parent |
|
Relatives |
|
Education | |
Signature | |
William Jennings Bryan (March 19, 1860 – July 26, 1925) was an American lawyer, orator, and politician. Beginning in 1896, he emerged as a dominant force in the Democratic Party, running three times as the party's nominee for President of the United States in the 1896, 1900, and 1908 elections. He served in the House of Representatives from 1891 to 1895 and as the Secretary of State under Woodrow Wilson from 1913 to 1915. Because of his faith in the wisdom of the common people, Bryan was often called "the Great Commoner",[1] and because of his rhetorical power and early fame as the youngest presidential candidate, "the Boy Orator".[2]
Born and raised in
Bryan retained control of the Democratic Party and again won the
After the Democrats won the presidency in the
Early life and education
William Jennings Bryan was born in
William was the fourth child of Silas and Mariah, but all three of his older siblings died during infancy. He also had five younger siblings, four of whom lived to adulthood.[12] William was home-schooled by his mother until the age of ten. Demonstrating a precocious talent for oratory, he gave public speeches as early as the age of four.[13] Silas was a Baptist and Mariah was a Methodist, but William's parents allowed him to choose his own church. At age fourteen, he had a conversion experience at a revival. He said that it was the most important day of his life.[14] At 15, he was sent to attend Whipple Academy, a private school in Jacksonville, Illinois.[15]
After graduating from Whipple Academy, Bryan entered
Bryan then studied law in Chicago at Union Law College (now
Early political career
Congressional service
Bryan established a successful legal practice in Lincoln with partner Adolphus Talbot, a Republican whom Bryan had known in law school.
With the help of Representative
Bryan sought re-election in 1892 with the support of many Populists and backed the Populist presidential candidate James B. Weaver over the Democratic presidential candidate, Grover Cleveland. Bryan won re-election by just 140 votes, and Cleveland defeated Weaver and incumbent Republican President Benjamin Harrison in the 1892 presidential election. Cleveland appointed a cabinet consisting largely of conservative Democrats like Morton, who became Cleveland's secretary of agriculture. Shortly after Cleveland had taken office, a series of bank closures brought on the Panic of 1893, a major economic crisis. In response, Cleveland called a special session of Congress to call for the repeal of the 1890 Sherman Silver Purchase Act, which required the federal government to purchase several million ounces of silver every month. Bryan mounted a campaign to save the Sherman Silver Purchase Act, but a coalition of Republicans and Democrats successfully repealed it.[33] Bryan, however, was successful in passing an amendment that provided for the establishment of the first peacetime federal income tax.[34][b]
As the economy declined after 1893, the reforms favored by Bryan and the Populists became more popular among many voters. Rather than running for re-election in 1894, Bryan sought election to the
After the 1894 elections, Bryan embarked on a nationwide speaking tour designed to boost free silver, move his party away from the conservative policies of the Cleveland administration, lure Populists and free silver Republicans into the Democratic Party, and raise Bryan's public profile before the next election. Speaking fees allowed Bryan to give up his legal practice and devote himself full-time to oratory.[36]
Presidential candidate and party leader
Presidential election of 1896
Democratic nomination
If they dare to come out in the open field and defend the gold standard as a good thing, we shall fight them to the uttermost, having behind us the producing masses of the nation and the world. Having behind us the commercial interests and the laboring interests and all the toiling masses, we shall answer their demands 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.
By 1896, free silver forces were ascendant within the party. Though many Democratic leaders were not as enthusiastic about free silver as Bryan was, most recognized the need to distance the party from the unpopular policies of the Cleveland administration. By the start of the 1896 Democratic National Convention, Representative Richard P. Bland, a long-time champion of free silver, was widely perceived to be the frontrunner for the party's presidential nomination. Bryan hoped to offer himself as a presidential candidate, but his youth and relative inexperience gave him a lower profile than veteran Democrats like Bland, Governor Horace Boies of Iowa, and Vice President Adlai Stevenson. The free silver forces quickly established dominance over the convention, and Bryan helped draft a party platform that repudiated Cleveland, attacked the conservative rulings of the Supreme Court, and called the gold standard "not only un-American but anti-American".[38]
Conservative Democrats demanded a debate on the party platform, and on the third day of the convention, each side put forth speakers to debate free silver and the gold standard. Bryan and Senator
The following day, the Democratic Party held its presidential ballot. With the continuing support of Governor
General election
Conservative Democrats, known as the "Gold Democrats", nominated a separate ticket. Cleveland himself did not publicly attack Bryan but privately favored the Republican candidate, William McKinley, over Bryan. Many urban newspapers in the Northeast and Midwest that had supported previous Democratic tickets also opposed Bryan's candidacy.[42] Bryan, however, won the support of the Populist Party, which nominated a ticket consisting of Bryan and Thomas E. Watson of Georgia. Though Populist leaders feared that the nomination of the Democratic candidate would damage the party in the long term, they shared many of Bryan's political views and had developed a productive working relationship with Bryan.[43]
The Republican campaign painted McKinley as the "advance agent of prosperity" and social harmony and warned of the supposed dangers of electing Bryan. McKinley and his campaign manager, Mark Hanna, knew that McKinley could not match Bryan's oratorical skills. Rather than giving speeches on the campaign trail, the Republican nominee conducted a front porch campaign. Hanna, meanwhile, raised an unprecedented amount of money, dispatched campaign surrogates and organized the distribution of millions of pieces of campaign literature.[44]
Facing a huge campaign finance disadvantage, the Democratic campaign relied largely on Bryan's oratorical skills. Breaking with the precedent set by most major party nominees, Bryan gave some 600 speeches, primarily in the hotly-contested Midwest.
McKinley won the election by a fairly comfortable margin by taking 51 percent of the popular vote and 271
1896 United States presidential election[52] | |||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|
Party | Candidate | Votes | Percentage | Electoral votes | |
Republican | William McKinley | 7,108,480 | 50.99% | 271 | |
Democratic | William Jennings Bryan | 5,588,462 | 40.09% | ||
Populist
|
William Jennings Bryan | 907,717 | 6.51% | ||
Silver | William Jennings Bryan | 12,873 | 0.09% | ||
Total | William Jennings Bryan | 6,509,052 | 46.69% | 176 | |
National Democratic | John Palmer
|
134,645 | 0.97% | 0 | |
Prohibition | Joshua Levering | 131,312 | 0.94% | 0 | |
Socialist Labor | Charles Matchett
|
36,373 | 0.26% | 0 | |
National Prohibition | Charles Bentley
|
19,367 | 0.14% | 0 | |
No party | Write-ins | 1,570 | 0.01% | 0 | |
Totals | 13,940,799 | 100.00% | 447 |
War and peace: 1898–1900
Spanish–American War
Because of better economic conditions for farmers and the effects of the
At Governor Silas A. Holcomb's request, Bryan recruited a 2000-man regiment for the Nebraska National Guard and the soldiers of the regiment elected Bryan as their leader. Under Colonel Bryan's command, the regiment was transported to Camp Cuba Libre in Florida, but the fighting between Spain and the United States ended before the regiment had been deployed to Cuba. Bryan's regiment remained in Florida for months after the end of the war, which prevented Bryan from taking an active role in the 1898 midterm elections. Bryan resigned his commission and left Florida in December 1898 after the United States and Spain had signed the Treaty of Paris.[54]
Bryan had supported the war to gain Cuba's independence, but he was outraged that the Treaty of Paris granted the United States control over the Philippines. Many Republicans believed that the United States had an obligation to "civilize" the Philippines, but Bryan strongly opposed what he saw as American imperialism. Despite his opposition to the annexation of the Philippines, Bryan urged his supporters to ratify the Treaty of Paris. He wanted to quickly bring an official end to the war and then to grant independence to the Philippines as soon as possible. With Bryan's support, the treaty was ratified in a close vote, bringing an official end to the Spanish–American War. In early 1899, the Philippine–American War broke out as the established Philippine government, under the leadership of Emilio Aguinaldo, sought to stop the American invasion of the archipelago.
Presidential election of 1900
The 1900 Democratic National Convention met in Kansas City, Missouri, where some Democratic leaders opposed to Bryan had hoped to nominate Admiral George Dewey for president. Nevertheless, Bryan faced no significant opposition by the time of the convention and he won his party's nomination unanimously. Bryan did not attend the convention but exercised control of the convention's proceedings via telegraph.[56] Bryan faced a decision regarding which issue his campaign would focus on. Many of his most fervent supporters wanted Bryan to continue his crusade for free silver, and Democrats from the Northeast advised Bryan to center his campaign on the growing power of trusts. Bryan, however, decided that his campaign would focus on anti-imperialism, partly to unite the factions of the party and win over some Republicans.[57] The party platform contained planks supporting free silver and opposing the power of trusts, but imperialism was labeled as the "paramount issue" of the campaign. The party nominated former Vice President Adlai Stevenson to serve as Bryan's running mate.[58]
In
Once again, the McKinley campaign established a massive financial advantage, and the Democratic campaign relied largely on Bryan's oratory.[61] In a typical day Bryan 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 a day, enough to fill 52 columns of a newspaper.[62] The Republican Party's superior organization and finances boosted McKinley's candidacy and, as in the previous campaign, most major newspapers favored McKinley. Bryan also had to contend with the Republican vice presidential nominee, Theodore Roosevelt, who had emerged a national celebrity in the Spanish–American War and proved to be a strong public speaker. Bryan's anti-imperialism failed to register with many voters and as the campaign neared its end, Bryan increasingly shifted to attacks on corporate power. He once again sought the vote of urban laborers by telling them to vote against the business interests that had "condemn[ed] the boys of this country to perpetual clerkship".[63]
By election day, few believed that Bryan would win, and McKinley ultimately prevailed once again over Bryan. Compared to the results of the 1896 election, McKinley increased his popular vote margin and picked up several Western states, including Bryan's home state of Nebraska.[64] The Republican platform of victory in war and a strong economy proved to be more important to voters than Bryan's questioning the morality of annexing the Philippines.[65] The election also confirmed the continuing organizational advantage of the Republican Party outside of the South.[64]
Between presidential campaigns, 1901–1907
After the election, Bryan returned to journalism and oratory and frequently appeared on the Chautauqua circuits to give well-attended lectures across the country.[67] In January 1901, Bryan published the first issue of his weekly newspaper, The Commoner, which echoed his favorite political and religious themes. Bryan served as the editor and publisher of the newspaper; Charles Bryan, Mary Bryan and Richard Metcalfe also performed editorial duties when Bryan was traveling. The Commoner became one of the most widely-read newspapers of its era and boasted 145,000 subscribers approximately five years after its founding. Though the paper's subscriber base heavily overlapped with Bryan's political base in the Midwest, content from the papers was frequently reprinted by major newspapers in the Northeast. In 1902, Bryan, his wife and his three children moved into Fairview, a mansion located in Lincoln; Bryan referred to the house as the "Monticello of the West", and frequently invited politicians and diplomats to visit.[68]
Bryan's defeat in 1900 cost him his status as the clear leader of the Democratic Party and conservatives such as
Prior to the 1904 Democratic National Convention, Alton B. Parker, a New York and conservative ally of David Hill, was the frontrunner for the Democratic presidential nomination. Conservatives feared that Bryan would join with the publisher William Randolph Hearst to block Parker's nomination. Seeking to appease Bryan and other progressives, Hill agreed to a party platform that omitted mention of the gold standard and criticized trusts.[72] In the event, Bryan did not support Parker or Hearst, but rather Francis Cockrell, a Missouri senator whose career had been almost wholly unremarkable.[73] Bryan's motivation was not any belief that Cockrell could defeat Roosevelt in the election, but rather that he would lose decisively, thus paving the way for Bryan to be re-nominated in 1908. However, the possibility of Hearst getting the nomination alarmed the party's moderates enough that they moved to support Parker, who was narrowly nominated on the first ballot at the convention, with Cockrell finishing a distant third place.[74] Bryan would nonetheless get his desired outcome when Roosevelt won by the biggest popular vote margin since James Monroe was re-elected without opposition in 1820. Afterwards, Bryan published a post-election edition of The Commoner that advised its readers: "Do not Compromise with Plutocracy".[75]
Bryan traveled to Europe in 1903, meeting with figures such as Leo Tolstoy, who shared some of Bryan's religious and political views.[76] In 1905, Bryan and his family embarked on a trip around the globe and visited eighteen countries in Asia and Europe. Bryan funded the trip with public speaking fees and a travelogue that was published on a weekly basis.[77] Bryan's travels abroad were documented in a study called "The Old World and its Ways", in which he shared his thoughts on different topics such as those related to progressive politics and labor legislation. Bryan was greeted by a large crowd upon his return to the United States in 1906 and was widely seen as the likely 1908 Democratic presidential nominee. Partly due to the efforts of muckraking journalists, voters had become increasingly open to progressive ideas since 1904. President Roosevelt himself had moved to the left, favoring federal regulation of railroad rates and meatpacking plants.[78] However, Bryan continued to favor more far-reaching reforms, including federal regulation of banks and securities, protections for union organizers and federal spending on highway construction and education. Bryan also briefly expressed support for the state and federal ownership of railroads in a manner similar to Germany but backed down from that policy in the face of an intra-party backlash.[79]
Presidential election of 1908
Roosevelt, who enjoyed wide popularity among most voters even while he alienated some corporate leaders, anointed Secretary of War William Howard Taft as his successor.[80] Meanwhile, Bryan re-established his control over the Democratic Party and won the endorsement of numerous local and state organizations. Conservative Democrats again sought to prevent Bryan's nomination, but were unable to unite around an alternative candidate. Bryan was nominated for president on the first ballot of the 1908 Democratic National Convention. He was joined by John W. Kern, a former state senator from the swing state of Indiana.[81]
Bryan campaigned on a party platform that reflected his long-held beliefs, but the Republican platform also advocated for progressive policies, which left relatively few major differences between the two major parties. One issue that the two parties differed on concerned deposit insurance, as Bryan favored requiring national banks to provide deposit insurance. Bryan largely unified the leaders of his own party and his pro-labor policies won him the first presidential endorsement ever issued by the American Federation of Labor.[82] As in previous campaigns, Bryan embarked on a public speaking tour to boost his candidacy but was later joined on the trail by Taft.[83]
Defying Bryan's confidence in his own victory, Taft decisively won the 1908 presidential election. Bryan won just a handful of states outside of the Solid South, as he failed to galvanize the support of urban laborers.[84] Bryan remains the only individual since the Civil War to lose three separate U.S. presidential elections as a major party nominee.[85] Since the ratification of the Twelfth Amendment, Bryan and Henry Clay are the lone individuals who received electoral votes in three separate presidential elections but lost all three elections.[86] The 493 cumulative electoral votes cast for Bryan across three separate elections are the most received by a presidential candidate who was never elected.
Bryan remained an influential figure in Democratic politics, and after Democrats took control of the House of Representatives in the
In 1910, he also came out in favor of women's suffrage.[90] Bryan crusaded as well for legislation to support the introduction of the initiative and referendum as a means of giving voters a direct voice while he made a whistle-stop campaign tour of Arkansas in 1910.[91] Although some observers, including President Taft, speculated that Bryan would make a fourth run for the presidency, Bryan repeatedly denied that he had any such intention.[92]
Wilson presidency
1912 election
An escalating split in the Republican Party gave Democrats their best chance in decades to win the presidency. Bryan did not seek the Democratic presidential nomination; his continuing influence gave him a major voice in choosing the nominee. Bryan was intent on preventing the conservatives in the party from nominating their candidate, as they had done in 1904. For a mix of practical and ideological reasons, Bryan ruled out supporting the candidacies of Oscar Underwood, Judson Harmon, and Joseph W. Folk, which left two major candidates competing for his backing: New Jersey Governor Woodrow Wilson and Speaker of the House Champ Clark. As Speaker, Clark could lay claim to progressive accomplishments, including the passage of constitutional amendments providing for the direct election of senators and the establishment of a federal income tax. However, Clark had alienated Bryan for his failure to lower the tariff and Bryan viewed the Speaker as overly friendly to conservative business interests. Wilson had criticized Bryan but had compiled a strong progressive record as governor. As the 1912 Democratic National Convention approached, Bryan continued to deny that he would seek the presidency, but many journalists and politicians suspected that Bryan hoped a deadlocked convention would turn to him.[93]
After the start of the convention, Bryan engineered the passage of a resolution stating that the party was "opposed to the nomination of any candidate who is a representative of, or under any obligation to,
In the
Secretary of State
President Wilson named Bryan as Secretary of State, the most prestigious appointive position. Bryan's extensive travels, popularity in the party, and support for Wilson in the election made him the obvious choice. Bryan took charge of a
Secretary of State Bryan pursued a series of bilateral treaties that required both signatories to submit all disputes to an investigative tribunal. He quickly won approval from the president and the Senate to proceed with his initiative. In mid-1913, El Salvador became the first nation to sign one of Bryan's treaties, and 29 other countries, including every great power in Europe other than Germany and Austria-Hungary, also agreed to sign the treaties.[98] Despite Bryan's stated aversion to conflict, he oversaw U.S. interventions in Haiti, the Dominican Republic and Mexico.[99]
After World War I broke out in Europe, Bryan consistently advocated for American neutrality between the Entente and the Central Powers. With Bryan's support, Wilson initially sought to stay out of the conflict, urging Americans to be "impartial in thought as well as action".[100] For much of 1914, Bryan attempted to bring a negotiated end to the war, but the leaders of both the Entente and the Central Powers were ultimately uninterested in American mediation. Bryan remained firmly committed to neutrality, but Wilson and others within the administration became increasingly sympathetic to the Entente.
The March 1915
Later career
Political involvement
During the 1916 presidential election, members of the Prohibition Party attempted to place Bryan into consideration for its presidential nomination, but he rejected the offer via telegram.[104][105]
Bryan supported Wilson's 1916 re-election campaign. Bryan did not attend as an official delegate, but the 1916 Democratic National Convention suspended its own rules to allow Bryan to address the convention; Bryan delivered a well-received speech that strongly defended Wilson's domestic record. Bryan served as a campaign surrogate for Wilson by delivering dozens of speeches, primarily to audiences west of the Mississippi River. Ultimately, Wilson narrowly prevailed over the Republican candidate, Charles Evans Hughes.[106] When the United States entered World War I in April 1917, Bryan wrote to 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."[107] Wilson declined to appoint Bryan to a federal position, but Bryan agreed to Wilson's request to provide public support for the war effort through his speeches and articles.[108] After the war, despite some reservations, Bryan supported Wilson's unsuccessful effort to bring the United States into the League of Nations.[109]
Crusade for Prohibition
After leaving office, Bryan spent much of his time advocating for the eight-hour day, a minimum wage, the right of unions to strike and increasingly women's suffrage.[110] However, his main crusades focused on support for prohibition and opposition to the teaching of evolution.[111][112] Congress passed the Eighteenth Amendment, which provided for nationwide Prohibition, in 1917. Two years later, Congress passed the Nineteenth Amendment, which granted women the right to vote nationwide. Both amendments were ratified in 1920.[113] In 1916 Bryan expressed his belief to John Reed that the government "may properly impose a minimum wage, regulate hours of labor, pass usury laws, and enforce inspection of food, sanitation and housing conditions."[114] During the 1920s, Bryan called for further reforms, including agricultural subsidies, the guarantee of a living wage, full public financing of political campaigns and an end to legal gender discrimination.[115]
Some Prohibitionists and other Bryan supporters tried to convince the three-time presidential candidate to enter the
Though he became less involved in Democratic politics after 1920, Bryan attended the 1924 Democratic National Convention as a delegate from Florida.[117] He helped defeat a resolution condemning the Ku Klux Klan because he expected that the organization would soon fold. Bryan disliked the Klan but never publicly attacked it.[118] He also strongly opposed the candidacy of Al Smith due to Smith's hostility towards Prohibition. After over 100 ballots, the Democratic convention nominated John W. Davis, a conservative Wall Street lawyer. To balance the conservative Davis with a progressive, the convention nominated Bryan's brother, Charles W. Bryan, for vice president. Bryan was disappointed by the nomination of Davis but strongly approved of the nomination of his brother and he delivered numerous campaign speeches in support of the Democratic ticket. Davis suffered one of the worst losses in the Democratic Party's history, taking just 29 percent of the vote against Republican President Calvin Coolidge and the third-party candidate Robert M. La Follette.[119]
Florida real estate promoter
To help Mary cope with her worsening health during the harsh winters of Nebraska, the Bryans bought a farm in Mission, Texas, in 1909.[120] Due to Mary's arthritis the Bryans in 1912 began to build a new home in Miami, Florida, known as Villa Serena. The Bryans made Villa Serena their permanent home, and Charles Bryan continued to oversee The Commoner from Lincoln. The Bryans were active citizens in Miami, leading a fundraising drive for the YMCA and frequently hosting the public at their home.[121] Bryan undertook lucrative speaking engagements, often serving as a spokesman for George E. Merrick's new planned community of Coral Gables.[122]
Trustee of American University
Bryan served as a member of the board of trustees at American University in Washington, D.C., from 1914 to his death.[123] For some of these years, he served concurrently with Warren G. Harding and Theodore Roosevelt.
Anti-evolution activism
In the 1920s, Bryan shifted his focus away from politics, becoming one of the most prominent religious figures in the country.
In the final years of his life, Bryan became the unofficial leader of a movement that sought to prevent public schools from teaching Charles Darwin's theory of evolution.[124] Bryan had long expressed skepticism and concern regarding Darwin's theory; in his famous 1909 Chautauqua lecture, "The Prince of Peace", Bryan had warned that the theory of evolution could undermine the foundations of morality.[130] Bryan opposed Darwin's theory of evolution through natural selection for two reasons. He believed what he considered a materialistic account of the descent of man (and all life) through evolution to be directly contrary to the Biblical creation account. Also, he considered Darwinism as applied to society (social Darwinism) to be a great evil force in the world by promoting hatred and conflicts and inhibiting upward social and economic mobility of the poor and oppressed.[131]
As part of his crusade against Darwinism, Bryan called for state and local laws banning public schools from teaching evolution.[132] He requested that lawmakers refrain from attaching a criminal penalty to the anti-evolution laws and also urged that educators be allowed to teach evolution as a "hypothesis", rather than as a fact. Only five southern states responded to Bryan's call to bar the teaching of evolution in public schools.[133]
Bryan was worried that the theory of evolution was gaining ground not only in the universities, but also within the church. The developments of 19th century
Scopes Trial
From July 10 to 21, 1925, Bryan participated in the highly publicized
Ultimately, the judge instructed the jury to render a verdict of guilty, and Scopes was fined $100 for violating the Butler Act.[136] The national media reported the trial in great detail, with H. L. Mencken ridiculing Bryan as a symbol of Southern ignorance and anti-intellectualism.[137] Even many Southern newspapers criticized Bryan's performance in the trial; the Memphis Commercial Appeal reported that "Darrow succeeded in showing that Bryan knows little about the science of the world". Bryan had been prevented from delivering a final argument at trial, but he arranged for the publication of the speech he had intended to give. In that publication, Bryan wrote that "science is a magnificent material force, but it is not a teacher of morals".[138]
Death
In the days following the Scopes Trial, Bryan delivered several speeches in Tennessee. On Sunday, July 26, 1925, Bryan died in his sleep from apoplexy[1] after he had attended a church service in Dayton.[139] Bryan's body was transported by rail from Dayton to Washington, D.C. He was buried at Arlington National Cemetery, with an epitaph that read, "Statesman, yet Friend to Truth! Of Soul Sincere, in Action Faithful, and in Honor Clear"[140] and on the other side "He Kept the Faith".[141][142]
Family
Bryan remained married to his wife, Mary, until his death in 1925. Mary served as a very important adviser to her husband; she passed the bar exam and learned German to help his career.
Legacy
Historical reputation and political legacy
Bryan elicited mixed views during his lifetime and his legacy remains complicated.[147] Author Scott Farris argues that "many fail to understand Bryan because he occupies a rare space in society ... too liberal for today's religious [and] too religious for today's liberals".[148] Jeff Taylor rejects the view that Bryan was a "pioneer of the welfare state" and a "forerunner of the New Deal", but argues that Bryan was more accepting of an interventionist federal government than his Democratic predecessors had been.[149] Biographer Michael Kazin, however, opines that:
Bryan was the first leader of a major party to argue for permanently expanding the power of the federal government to serve the welfare of ordinary Americans from the working and middle classes… he did more than any other man—between the fall of Grover Cleveland and the election of Woodrow Wilson—to transform his party from a bulwark of laissez-faire to the citadel of liberalism we identify with Franklin D. Roosevelt and his ideological descendants.[85]
Kazin argues that, compared to Bryan, "only Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson had a greater impact on politics and political culture during the era of reform that began in the mid-1890s and lasted until the early 1920s".[150] Writing in 1931, former Secretary of the Treasury William Gibbs McAdoo stated that "with the exception of the men who have occupied the White House, Bryan ... had more to do with the shaping of the public policies of the last forty years than any other American citizen".[151] Historian Robert D. Johnston notes that Bryan was "arguably [the] most influential politician from the Great Plains".[152] In 2015, political scientist Michael G. Miller and historian Ken Owen ranked Bryan as one of the four most influential American politicians who never served as president, alongside Alexander Hamilton, Henry Clay, and John C. Calhoun.[153]
Kazin also emphasizes the limits of Bryan's influence by noting that "for decades after [Bryan]'s death, influential scholars and journalists depicted him as a self-righteous simpleton who longed to preserve an age that had already passed".[85] Writing in 2006, editor Richard Lingeman noted that "William Jennings Bryan is mainly remembered as the fanatical old fool Fredric March played in Inherit the Wind.[154] Similarly, in 2011, John McDermott wrote that "Bryan is perhaps best known as the sweaty crank of a lawyer who represented Tennessee in the Scopes trial. After his defence of creationism, he became a mocked caricature, a sweaty possessor of avoirdupois, bereft of bombast".[37] Kazin writes that "scholars have increasingly warmed to Bryan's motives, if not his actions" in the Scopes Trial because of Bryan's rejection of eugenics, a practice that many evolutionists of the 1920s favored.[155]
Kazin also notes the stain that Bryan's acceptance of the Jim Crow system places on his legacy, writing
His one great flaw was to support, with a studied lack of reflection, the abusive system of Jim Crow—a view that was shared, until the late 1930s, by nearly every white Democrat… After Bryan's death in 1925, most intellectuals and activists on the broad left rejected the amalgam that had inspired him: a strict populist morality based on a close read reading of Scripture… Liberals and radicals from the age of FDR to the present have tended to scorn that credo as naïve and bigoted, a remnant of an era of white Protestant supremacy that has, or should have, passed.[85]
Nonetheless, prominent individuals from both parties have praised Bryan and his legacy. In 1962, former President
I think that we would choose the word 'sincerity' as fitting him [Bryan] most of all… it was that sincerity that served him so well in his life-long fight against sham and privilege and wrong. It was that sincerity that made him a force for good in his own generation and kept alive many of the ancient faiths on which we are building today. We… can well agree that he fought the good fight; that he finished the course; and that he kept the faith.[158]
More recently, conservative Republicans such as Ralph Reed have hailed Bryan's legacy. Reed described Bryan as "the most consequential evangelical politician of the twentieth century".[159] Bryan's career has also been compared to that of Donald Trump.[147]
In popular culture
- It has been suggested by some economists, historians, and literary critics that L. Frank Baum satirized Bryan as the Cowardly Lion in The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, which was published in 1900. Those assertions are based partly on Baum's history as a Republican supporter who advocated in his role as a journalist on behalf of William McKinley and his policies.[160][161][162]
- Vachel Lindsay's 1919 "singing poem" "Bryan, Bryan, Bryan, Bryan" is a lengthy tribute to the idol of the poet's youth.
- Bryan played a minor role in Look Homeward Angel(1929).
- Bryan also has a biographical part in "The 42nd Parallel" (1930) in USA Trilogy.[163]
- Edwin Maxwell played Bryan in the 1944 film Wilson.
- Robert Edwin Lee, is a highly fictionalized account of the Scopes Trial written in response to McCarthyism. A populist thrice-defeated presidential candidate from Nebraska named Matthew Harrison Brady (based on Bryan) comes to a small town to help prosecute a young teacher for teaching evolution to his schoolchildren. He is opposed by a famous trial lawyer, Henry Drummond (based on Darrow) and mocked by a cynical newspaperman (based on Mencken) as the trial assumes a national profile. The 1960 film adaptation was directed by Stanley Kramer and starred Fredric March as Brady and Spencer Tracyas Drummond.
- Bryan appears as a character in Douglas Moore's 1956 opera The Ballad of Baby Doe.
- Ainslie Pryor played Bryan in a 1956 episode of the CBS anthology series You Are There.
- Bryan also appears in Donald R. Bensen.
- Bryan appears in Gore Vidal's 1987 novel Empire.
- The 1992 short story "Plowshare" by Martha Soukup and part of the 1984 novel Job: A Comedy of Justice by Robert A. Heinlein are set in worlds where Bryan became president.
Memorials
The
President Franklin D. Roosevelt delivered an address on May 3, 1934, dedicating a statue of William Jennings Bryan created by Gutzon Borglum, the sculptor of Mount Rushmore. This Bryan statue by Borglum originally stood in Washington, D.C., but was displaced by highway construction and moved by an Act of Congress in 1961 to Salem, Illinois, Bryan's birthplace.[165][166]
A statue of Bryan represented the state of Nebraska in the National Statuary Hall in the United States Capitol, as part of the National Statuary Hall Collection. In 2019, a statue of Chief Standing Bear replaced the statue of Bryan in the National Statuary Hall.[167][168]
Bryan was named to the Nebraska Hall of Fame in 1971, and a bust of him resides there, in the Nebraska State Capitol.[169] Bryan was honored by the United States Postal Service with a $2 Great Americans series postage stamp.
Numerous objects, places and people have been named after Bryan, including Bryan County, Oklahoma,[170] Bryan Medical Center in Lincoln, Nebraska, and Bryan College, located in Dayton, Tennessee. Omaha Bryan High School and Bryan Middle School in Bellevue, Nebraska, are also named for Bryan. During World War II the Liberty ship SS William J. Bryan was built in Panama City, Florida, and WJ A Bryan Elementary School in Miami, named in his honor.[171]
See also
- Fundamentalist–Modernist Controversy
- Progressive Era
- The Rhetorical Presidency
Notes
- ^ Asked when his family "dropped the 'O'" from his O'Bryan surname, he replied there had never been one.[7]
- ^ The tax would be struck down by the Supreme Court in the 1895 case of Pollock v. Farmers' Loan & Trust Co..[34]
- ^ U.S. senators were elected by state legislatures prior to the ratification of the Seventeenth Amendment in 1913.
Citations
- ^ a b Nimick, John (July 27, 1925). "Great Commoner Bryan dies in sleep, apoplexy given as cause of death". UPI Archives. Retrieved December 26, 2017.
- ^ Morgan, Michael (October 24, 2020). "'The Boy Orator' presidential candidate attracted crowds but not their votes". Delmarva Now. Retrieved April 7, 2022.
- ^ "Youngest & Oldest Electoral Vote recipients". Talk Elections. July 7, 2015. Retrieved April 18, 2020.
- ^ "William Jennings Bryan and a Spanish American War Roster". October 29, 2022.
- ^ "William Jennings Bryan, 1860-1925". Nebraska State Historical Society. November 30, 2006. Archived from the original on December 6, 2006. Retrieved June 27, 2023.
{{cite web}}
: CS1 maint: unfit URL (link) - ^ Kazin (2006), pp. 4–5
- ^ Bryan Memoirs of William Jennings Bryan, pp. 22–26.
- ^ Colletta (1964), pp. 3–5.
- ^ Kazin (2006), p. 5
- ^ Kazin (2006), pp. 4–5, 9
- ^ "Florida International University: Reclaiming the Everglades-biography of William Sherman Jennings". Archived from the original on March 3, 2016. Retrieved February 3, 2022.
- ^ Kazin (2006), p. 8
- ^ Kazin (2006), pp. 10–11
- ^ "PCA History On This Day March 19: William Jennings Bryan". PCA History. March 19, 2012. Archived from the original on December 1, 2020. Retrieved August 22, 2018.
- ^ Kazin (2006), pp. 8–9
- ^ a b Kazin (2006), pp. 9–10
- ^ Kazin (2006), p. 12
- ^ a b Kazin (2006), pp. 13–14
- ^ Colletta (1964), p. 30.
- ^ Colletta (1964), p. 21.
- ^ Kazin (2006), pp. 15–17
- ^ Kazin (2006), pp. 17–18
- ^ Kazin (2006), pp. 17–19
- ^ Kazin (2006), pp. 22–24
- ^ Kazin (2006), p. 25
- ^ Kazin (2006), pp. 25–27
- ^ Colletta (1964), p. 48.
- ^ Kazin (2006), p. 27
- ^ Kazin (2006), pp. 31–34
- ^ Kazin (2006), pp. 20–22
- ^ Kazin (2006), pp. 33–36
- ^ Hibben (1929), p. 175.
- ^ Kazin (2006), pp. 35–38
- ^ a b Kazin (2006), p. 51
- ^ Kazin (2006), pp. 40–43
- ^ Kazin (2006), pp. 46–48
- ^ a b McDermott, John (August 19, 2011). "The life of Bryan, or what did monetary policy ever do for us?". Financial Times.
- ^ Kazin (2006), pp. 53–55, 58
- ^ Kazin (2006), pp. 56–62
- ^ a b Kazin (2006), pp. 62–63
- ^ Glass, Andrew (March 19, 2012). "William Jennings Bryan born, March 19, 1860". Politico. Retrieved August 3, 2018.
- ^ Kazin (2006), p. 63
- ^ Kazin (2006), pp. 63–65
- ^ Kazin (2006), pp. 65–67
- ISBN 978-0-393-05931-1.
- ^ Richard J. Ellis And Mark Dedrick, "The Presidential Candidate, Then and Now" Perspectives on Political Science (1997) 26#4 pp. 208–216 online
- ISBN 978-1-135-91462-2.
- ISBN 978-1-4767-5296-9.
- ^ Kazin (2006), pp. 76–79
- ^ Kazin (2006), pp. 80–82
- ^ Kazin (2006), pp. 202–203
- ^ David Leip. "1896 Presidential General Election Results – Pennsylvania". Dave Leip's U.S. Election Atlas. Retrieved March 24, 2018.
- ^ Kazin (2006), pp. 83–86
- ^ a b Kazin (2006), pp. 86–89
- ^ Sicius (2015), p. 182
- ^ Kazin (2006), pp. 98–99
- ^ Kazin (2006), pp. 95–98
- ^ Kazin (2006), pp. 99–100
- ^ a b Kazin (2006), pp. 102–103
- ^ Kazin (2006), pp. 91–92
- ^ Kazin (2006), pp. 104–105
- ^ Coletta (1964), p. 272
- ^ Kazin (2006), pp. 105–107
- ^ a b Kazin (2006), pp. 107–108
- ^ Clements (1982), p. 38.
- ^ source Joseph Keppler in Puck (magazine) Sept 19, 1906; reprinted in: Smylie, James H. "William Jennings Bryan and the Cartoonists: A Pictorial Lampoon, 1896—1925". Journal of Presbyterian History 53.2 (1975): 83–92 at p 88 online.
- ^ Kazin (2006), p. 122
- ^ Kazin (2006), pp. 111–113
- ^ Kazin (2006), pp. 113–114
- ^ William Jennings Bryan Volume 1 By Paolo Enrico Coletta, 1964, P.441
- ^ Kazin (2006), p. 114
- ^ Kazin (2006), pp. 114–116
- ^ "HarpWeek | Elections | 1904 Large Cartoons". elections.harpweek.com.
- ^ Kennedy, Robert C. "Citizen Parker". The New York Times. Retrieved October 8, 2015.
- ^ Kazin (2006), pp. 119–120
- ^ Kazin (2006), pp. 126–128
- ^ Kazin (2006), pp. 121–122
- ^ Kazin (2006), pp. 142–143
- ^ Kazin (2006), pp. 145–149
- ^ Kazin (2006), pp. 151–152
- ^ Kazin (2006), pp. 152–154
- ^ Kazin (2006), pp. 154–157
- ^ Kazin (2006), pp. 159–160
- ^ Kazin (2006), pp. 163–164
- ^ a b c d Kazin (2006), p. xix
- ISBN 978-0-19-049805-4.
- ^ Kazin (2006), pp. 179–181
- ^ Kazin (2006), pp. 172–173
- ^ Coletta (1969, Vol. 2), p. 8
- ^ Kazin (2006), p. 177
- ^ Steven L. Piott, Giving Voters a Voice: The Origins of the Initiative and Referendum in America (2003) pp. 126–132
- ^ Kazin (2006), p. 173
- ^ Kazin (2006), pp. 181–184
- ^ Kazin (2006), pp. 187–191
- ^ Kazin (2006), pp. 191–192, 215
- ^ Kazin (2006), pp. 215–217, 222–223
- ^ Kazin (2006), pp. 223–227
- ^ Kazin (2006), pp. 217–218
- ^ Kazin (2006), pp. 229–231
- ^ Kazin (2006), pp. 232–233
- ^ Kazin (2006), pp. 234–236
- ^ Levine (1987), p. 8
- ^ Kazin (2006), pp. 237–238
- ISBN 978-0595481262– via Google Books.
- Newspapers.com.
- ^ Kazin (2006), pp. 248–252
- ^ Hibben (1929), p. 356
- ^ Kazin (2006), pp. 254–255
- ^ Kazin (2006), pp. 258–260
- ^ Kazin (2006), p. 245
- ^ Lawrence W. Levine, Defender of the faith: William Jennings Bryan, the last decade, 1915–1925 (Oxford UP, 1965) ch 6–9.
- ^ Paolo E. Coletta, William Jennings Bryan". Vol. 3: Political Puritan, 1915–1925 1969) pp 282–299.
- ^ Kazin (2006), p. 258
- ^ Defender of the Faith: William Jennings Bryan, the Last Decade, 1915-1925 By Lawrence W. Levine, P.198
- ^ Kazin (2006), pp. 267–268
- ^ Kazin (2006), pp. 269–271
- ^ Kazin (2006), pp. 282–283
- ^ Coletta (1969, Vol. 3), pp. 162, 177, 184
- ^ Kazin (2006), pp. 283–285
- ^ Kazin (2006), p. 170
- ^ Kazin (2006), pp. 245–247
- ^ George, Paul S. "Brokers, Binders & Builders: Greater Miami's Boom of the Mid-1920s". Florida Historical Quarterly, vol. 59, no. 4. 1981. pp. 440–463.
- ^ American University website
- ^ a b Kazin (2006), pp. 262–263
- ^ Florida Memory. "William Jennings Bryan Conducting a Bible Class in Royal Palm Park – Miami, Florida". Retrieved August 17, 2018.
- ^ Kazin (2006), pp. 271–272
- ^ Kazin (2006), pp. 272–273
- ^ Ronald L. Numbers, The Creationists: From Scientific Creationism to Intelligent Design, (2006), p. 13
- ISBN 978-0-19-508674-4. Retrieved August 17, 2018.
- ^ See The Prince of Peace
- ^ Coletta, (1969, Vol. 3), ch. 8
- ^ Kazin (2006), pp. 274–275
- ^ Kazin (2006), pp. 280–281
- ^ Kazin (2006), pp. 285–288
- ^ Kazin (2006), pp. 292–293
- ^ Kazin (2006), pp. 293–295
- ^ H.L. Mencken – In Memoriam – W.J.B. Archived July 31, 2019, at the Wayback Machine
- ^ Kazin (2006), pp. 294–295
- ^ Kazin (2006), p. 294
- ^ Kazin (2006), pp. 296–297
- ISBN 978-3110974362– via Google Books.
- ^ Burial Detail: Bryan, William J (Section 4, Grave 3118-3121) – ANC Explorer
- ^ Kazin (2006), pp. 14, 296
- ^ Kazin (2006), pp. 3 (1891–1945). 00–301
- ^ Kazin (2006), pp. 266–267, 300–301
- ^ Kazin (2006), pp. 198–199
- ^ a b Rothman, Lily (February 24, 2017). "The Man Steve Bannon Compared to President Trump, as Described in 1925". Time. Retrieved August 2, 2018.
- ^ Farris (2013), pp. 93–94
- ^ Taylor (2006), pp. 187–88
- ^ Kazin (2006), p. xiv
- ^ Kazin (2006), p. 304
- JSTOR westhistquar.42.3.0331.
- ^ Masket, Seth (November 19, 2015). "A bracket to determine the most influential American who never became president". Vox. Retrieved August 1, 2018.
- ^ Lingeman, Richard (March 5, 2006). "The Man With the Silver Tongue". The New York Times.
- ^ Kazin (2006), p. 263
- ^ Miller, Merle. Plain Speaking. pp. 118–19.
- ISBN 978-0-271-03742-4.
- ^ "Franklin D. Roosevelt: Address at a Memorial to William Jennings Bryan". UCSB. Archived from the original on May 25, 2015. Retrieved June 25, 2013.
- ^ Kazin (2006), p. 302
- S2CID 153606670.
- .
- ISBN 978-0-275-97418-3.
- ^ Dos Passos, John (1896–1970). U.S.A. Daniel Aaron & Townsend Ludington, eds. New York: Library of America, 1996.
- ^ "National Register Information System". National Register of Historic Places. National Park Service. July 9, 2010.
- ^ http://moses.law.umn.edu/darrow/documents/Address_President_Dedication_Bryan_Memorial_05_03_1934.pdf "Address of the President at the Dedication of the Bryan Memorial".
- ^ http://moses.law.umn.edu/darrow/trials.php?tid=7 Archived July 12, 2017, at the Wayback Machine "Government Documents: Address of the President at the Dedication of the Bryan Memorial May, 1934.".
- ^ "The civil rights leader 'almost nobody knows about' gets a statue in the U.S. Capitol". The Washington Post.
- ^ "The Clarence Darrow Collection". Archived from the original on July 12, 2017. Retrieved March 28, 2021.
- ^ "Nebraska Hall of Fame Members". nebraskahistory.org. Archived from the original on July 14, 2006.
{{cite web}}
: CS1 maint: unfit URL (link) - ^ Oklahoma Historical Society. "Origin of County Names in Oklahoma", Chronicles of Oklahoma 2:1 (March 1924) 7582 (retrieved August 18, 2006).
- ISBN 978-1-4766-1754-1. Retrieved December 7, 2017.
Bibliography
- Clements, Kendrick A. (1982). William Jennings Bryan, Missionary Isolationist. University of Tennessee Press. ISBN 978-0-87049-364-5.
- Coletta, Paolo E. William Jennings Bryan. Vol. 1. Archived from the original (3 vols.) on March 16, 2012. Retrieved September 18, 2017. Online vol. 2[permanent dead link]; online vol. 3[permanent dead link].
- ——— (1964). William Jennings Bryan, Vol. 1: Political Evangelist, 1860–1908. University of Nebraska Press. ISBN 978-0-8032-0022-7.
- ——— (1969). William Jennings Bryan, Vol. 2: Progressive Politician and Moral Statesman. University of Nebraska Press. ISBN 978-0-8032-0023-4.
- ——— (1969). William Jennings Bryan, Vol. 3: Political Puritan, 1915–1925. University of Nebraska Press. ISBN 978-0-8032-0024-1.
- ——— (1964). William Jennings Bryan, Vol. 1: Political Evangelist, 1860–1908. University of Nebraska Press.
- ——— (1984). "Will the Real Progressive Stand Up? William Jennings Bryan and Theodore Roosevelt to 1909". Nebraska History. 65: 15–57.
- Farris, Scott (2013). Almost President: The Men Who Lost the Race but Changed the Nation. Rowman & Littlefield. ISBN 978-0-7627-8421-9.
- Hibben, Paxton (1929). The Peerless leader, William Jennings Bryan. Farrar & Rinehart, Inc.
- Kazin, Michael (2006). A Godly Hero: The Life of William Jennings Bryan. Knopf. ISBN 978-0-375-41135-9.
- Levine, Lawrence W. (1965). Defender of The Faith: William Jennings Bryan: The Last Decade 1915–1925. Oxford University Press.
- Rove, Karl (2016). The Triumph of William McKinley: Why the Election of 1896 Still Matters. Simon and Schuster. ISBN 978-1-4767-5296-9.
- Thompson, Charles Willis (June 13, 1925). "Silver-Tongue". Profiles. The New Yorker. Vol. 1, no. 17. pp. 9–10.
- Sicius, Francis J. (2015). The Progressive Era: A Reference Guide. ABC-CLIO. ISBN 978-1-61069-447-6.
- Taylor, Jeff (2006). Where Did the Party Go?: William Jennings Bryan, Hubert Humphrey, and the Jeffersonian Legacy. Columbia: University of Missouri Press. ISBN 978-0-8262-1659-5.
Further reading
Biographies
- Ashby, LeRoy. William Jennings Bryan: champion of democracy (1987) online
- Cherny, Robert W. (1985). A Righteous Cause: The Life of William Jennings Bryan. Little Brown & Co. ISBN 978-0-316-13854-3.. brief scholarly overview; online
- Clements, Kendrick A. William Jennings Bryan, missionary isolationist (U of Tennessee Press, 1982) online; focus on foreign policy.
- Coletta, Paolo E. William Jennings Bryan. I: Political Evangelist, 1860–1908 (U of Nebraska Press, 1964), the most detailed of the standard scholarly biographies; online review
- Coletta, Paolo E. William Jennings Bryan. Volume II, Progressive Politician and Moral Statesman, 1909 1915 (1969)
- Coletta, Paolo E. William Jennings Bryan". Vol. 3: Political Puritan, 1915–1925 1969)
- Glad, Paul W. (1960). The trumpet soundeth; William Jennings Bryan and his democracy, 1896–1912. University of Nebraska Press. OCLC 964829.
- Kazin, Michael. A godly hero : the life of William Jennings Bryan (2006) online
- Koenig, Louis William (1971). Bryan: A Political Biography of William Jennings Bryan. Putnam Pub Group. ISBN 978-0-399-10104-5.
- Leinwand, Gerald (2006). William Jennings Bryan: An Uncertain Trumpet. Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. ISBN 978-0-7425-5158-9.
- Levine, Lawrence W. Defender of the faith: William Jennings Bryan, the last decade, 1915–1925 (Oxford UP, 1965) online
- Werner, M. R. (1929). William Jennings Bryan. Harcourt, Brace. OCLC 1517464., outdated.
Specialized studies
- Barnes, James A. (1947). "Myths of the Bryan Campaign". Mississippi Valley Historical Review. 34 (3): 367–404. JSTOR 1898096. on 1896
- ISBN 978-0-521-71762-5. online
- Cherny, Robert W. (1996). "William Jennings Bryan and the Historians" (PDF). Nebraska History. 77 (3–4): 184–193. (PDF) from the original on October 9, 2022. Analysis of the historiography.
- Clements, Kendrick A. (1992). The Presidency of Woodrow Wilson. University Press of Kansas. ISBN 978-0-7006-0523-1.
- Edwards, Mark (2000). "Rethinking the Failure of Fundamentalist Political Antievolutionism after 1925". PMID 17120377. Argues that fundamentalists thought they had won Scopes trial but death of Bryan shook their confidence.
- Folsom, Burton W. (1999). No More Free Markets Or Free Beer: The Progressive Era in Nebraska, 1900–1924. Lexington Books. ISBN 978-0-7391-0014-1.
- Glad, Paul W. (1964). McKinley, Bryan and the People. Lippincott. OCLC 559539520.
- Hannigan, Robert E. The New World Power, U of Pennsylvania Press, 2013.
- ——— (2016), The Great War and American Foreign Policy, 1914–24, University of Pennsylvania Press, ISBN 978-0812248593.
- Hohenstein, Kurt (2000). "William Jennings Bryan and the Income Tax: Economic Statism and Judicial Usurpation in the Election of 1896". Journal of Law & Politics. 16 (1): 163–192. ISSN 0749-2227.
- Jeansonne, Glen (1988). "Goldbugs, Silverites, and Satirists: Caricature and Humor in the Presidential Election of 1896". Journal of American Culture. 11 (2): 1–8. ISSN 0191-1813.
- Larson, Edward (1997). Summer for the Gods: The Scopes trial and America's continuing debate over science and religion. New York: Basic Books. ISBN 978-0-465-07509-6.
- Longfield, Bradley J. (2000). "For Church and Country: the Fundamentalist-modernist Conflict in the Presbyterian Church". Journal of Presbyterian History. 78 (1): 34–50. ISSN 0022-3883. Puts Scopes in larger religious context.
- Maddux, Kristy. "Fundamentalist fool or populist paragon? William Jennings Bryan and the campaign against evolutionary theory". Rhetoric and Public Affairs 16.3 (2013): 489–520.
- Magliocca, Gerard N. (2011). The Tragedy of William Jennings Bryan: Constitutional Law and the Politics of Backlash. Yale University Press. ISBN 978-0-300-20582-4.
- Mahan, Russell L. (2003). "William Jennings Bryan and the Presidential Campaign of 1896". White House Studies. 3 (2): 215–227. ISSN 1535-4768.
- Morton, Richard Allen (2015), "'It Was Bryan and Sullivan Who did the Trick': How William Jennings Bryan and Illinois' Roger C. Sullivan Brought About the Nomination of Woodrow Wilson in 1912", Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society, vol. 108, no. 2, pp. 147–181,
- Murphy, Troy A. (2002). "William Jennings Bryan: Boy Orator, Broken Man, and the 'Evolution' of America's Public Philosophy". Great Plains Quarterly. 22 (2): 83–98. ISSN 0275-7664.
- Rove, Karl (2015) The Triumph of William McKinley: Why the Election of 1896 Still Matters, Simon & Schuster, ISBN 978-1-4767-5295-2. Detailed popular narrative of the entire campaign by Karl Rove, a prominent 21st-century Republican campaign advisor.
- Scroop, Daniel (2013). "William Jennings Bryan's 1905–1906 World Tour" (PDF). Historical Journal. 56 (2): 459–486. S2CID 159980462.
- Smith, Willard H. (1966). "William Jennings Bryan and the Social Gospel". The Journal of American History. 53 (1): 41–60. JSTOR 1893929.
- Taylor, Jeff (2006), Where did the party go? : William Jennings Bryan, Hubert Humphrey, and the Jeffersonian legacy
- Williams, R. Hal (2010). Realigning America: McKinley, Bryan, and the Remarkable Election of 1896. University Press of Kansas. ISBN 978-0-7006-1721-0.
- Wood, L. Maren (2002). "The Monkey Trial Myth: Popular Culture Representations of the Scopes Trial". Canadian Review of American Studies. 32 (2): 147–164. S2CID 159954176.
Writings by Bryan
- Bryan, William Jennings (1967), Ginger, Ray (ed.), William Jennings Bryan: selections, Indianapolis, Bobbs-Merrill, 259 pp
- ——— (1897), The first battle: a story of the campaign of 1896 (campaign speeches), Chicago, W. B. Conkey Co., 693 pp.
- The Commoner Condensed, annual compilation of The Commoner magazine; full text online for 1901, 1902, 1903, 1907, 1907, 1908
- Bryan, William Jennings (1907), The old world and its ways, St. Louis, The Thompson Publishing Company, 560 pp. At Project Gutenberg.
- ——— (1909), Bryan, Mary Baird (ed.), Speeches of William Jennings Bryan
- ——— (1922), In His image, Freeport, N.Y., Books for Libraries Press 226 pp.
- ——— (1925), The Memoirs: of William Jennings Bryan, by himself and his wife[permanent dead link], 560 pp.
- ——— (1906), British Rule in India
External links
- Biography at the Biographical Directory of the United States Congress
- Works by William Jennings Bryan at Project Gutenberg
- Works by or about William Jennings Bryan at Internet Archive
- Works by William Jennings Bryan at LibriVox (public domain audiobooks)
- Luke Schleif: Bryan, William Jennings, in: 1914–1918 online. International Encyclopedia of the First World War.
- William Jennings Bryan cylinder recordings, from the Cylinder Preservation and Digitization Project at the University of California, Santa BarbaraLibrary.
- "The Deity of Christ" – paper by Bryan on the subject
- William Jennings Bryan Recognition Project (WJBP)
- "William Jennings Bryan, Presidential Contender" from C-SPAN's The Contenders