Bryan, William Jennings

Bryan, William Jennings (brī`ən), 1860–1925, American political leader, b. Salem, Ill. Although the nation consistently rejected him for the presidency, it eventually adopted many of the reforms he urged—the graduated federal income tax, popular election of senators, woman suffrage, public knowledge of newspaper ownership, prohibition, federally insured bank deposits, regulation of the stock market, pure food and drug laws, and several others.

Presidential Hopeful

He practiced law at Jacksonville, Ill., and in 1887 he moved to Lincoln, Nebr. Bryan was a U.S. Representative from 1891 to 1895 but was defeated for the U.S. Senate in 1894. The next two years he spent as editor in chief of the Omaha World-Herald. Having ardently identified himself with the free silver

Origins of the Movement

Free silver became a popular issue soon after the Panic of 1873, and it was a major issue in the next quarter century.
.....  forces in Congress, he became their most popular speaker in a preconvention drive to control the Democratic national convention at Chicago in 1896.

At the convention his famous "Cross of Gold" speech so swayed the delegates that his nomination for President was assured, even though he was only 36 years old. The Populist party also nominated him, but the conservative gold Democrats ran John M. Palmer. The chief issue of the campaign was Bryan's proposal for free and unlimited coinage of silver, which he thought would remedy the economic ills then plaguing farmers and industrial workers. He lost the bitterly fought contest to Republican William McKinley, whose campaign was skillfully managed by Marcus A. Hanna.

Bryan controlled the Democratic convention in 1900 and saved the silver plank from removal by Eastern gold factions, but he agreed to put the campaign emphasis on anti-imperialism. Defeated again by McKinley, Bryan in 1901 started the Commoner, a widely read weekly that kept him in the public eye. His reduced party power in 1904 resulted in the compromise nomination of Alton B. Parker, a conservative New Yorker, upon a platform dictated by Bryan. Parker, however, disavowed the silver plank, and Bryan unwillingly acquiesced. Parker's overwhelming defeat by Theodore Roosevelt turned the Democrats again to Bryan, who in 1908 was nominated a third time. Roosevelt's candidate, William H. Taft

Early Career

After graduating (1878) from Yale, he attended Cincinnati Law School.
..... , defeated him.

Secretary of State

The last Democratic convention in which Bryan played an important role was that of 1912, where his switch to Woodrow Wilson

Educator

He graduated from Princeton in 1879 and studied law at the Univ. of Virginia.
.....  helped gain Wilson the nomination. Upon his election Wilson named Bryan secretary of state. Bryan was influential in holding the Democrats together during the first 18 months of Wilson's administration, when unity was essential to the enactment of the president's reform legislation. He had little previous experience in foreign affairs but studied international questions conscientiously. With some 30 nations he negotiated treaties providing for investigation of all disputes. Antiwar leanings made Bryan more conciliatory than Wilson toward Germany. His Latin American policies, particularly those involving Nicaragua, caused a good deal of friction. Disliking the strong language of the second Lusitania note drafted by Wilson, in which he felt the president had abandoned America's neutral position, Bryan resigned on June 9, 1915, rather than sign it. However, he supported Wilson in the 1916 election and after war was declared.

Later Years and the Scopes Trial

In the 1920 Democratic convention at San Francisco he fought in vain for a prohibition plank, and in 1924 at New York City he supported William G. McAdoo against Alfred E. Smith, but he was no longer the party's leader. In his later years Bryan, a Presbyterian, devoted himself to the defense of fundamentalism. He addressed legislatures urging measures against teaching evolution and appeared for the prosecution in the famous Scopes trial in Tennessee. Although he won the case in the trial court, Bryan's beliefs were subjected to severe ridicule in a searching examination by opposing counsel, Clarence Darrow. Five days after the trial, Bryan died in his sleep.

Bibliography

See the memoirs (1925, repr. 1971), begun by Bryan and finished by his widow; biographies by W. C. Williams (1936), P. W. Glad (1960), P. E. Coletta (3 vol., 1964–69), L. W. Koenig (1971), and W. Kazin (2006); studies by L. W. Levine (1965) and P. W. Glad, ed. (1968).

Charles Wayland Bryan

William Jennings Bryan's brother, Charles Wayland Bryan, 1867–1945, b. Salem, Ill., was for many years W. J. Bryan's political secretary and business agent. He was publisher and associate editor of the Commoner, mayor of Lincoln, Nebr., and governor of Nebraska.

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Bryan, William Jennings

William Jennings Bryan, c. 1908.

(credit: Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.)

(born March 19, 1860, Salem, Ill., U.S.—died July 26, 1925, Dayton, Tenn.) U.S. politician and orator. He practiced law at Jacksonville, Ill. (1883–87), before moving to Lincoln, Neb., where he was elected to the U.S. Congress in 1890. In the U.S. House of Representatives (1891–95), he became the national leader of the Free Silver Movement; he advocated its aims in his “Cross of Gold” speech, which won him the Democratic Party nomination for president in 1896. He was the party's nominee again in 1900 and 1908. In 1901 he founded a newspaper, The Commoner, and thereafter lectured widely to admiring audiences; he was called “the Great Commoner.” He helped secure the presidential nomination for Woodrow Wilson in 1912 and served as his secretary of state (1913–15), contributing to world law by espousing arbitration to prevent war. A believer in a literal interpretation of the Bible, he was a prosecuting attorney in the Scopes trial (1925), in which he debated Clarence Darrow on the issue of evolution; the trial took a heavy toll on his health, and he died soon after it ended.

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Bryan, William Jennings (1860–1925) political leader, orator; born in Salem, Ill. After practicing law, he was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives (Dem., 1891–95) and began to develop his reputation as "the Great Commoner," using his oratorical skills on behalf of the causes of the common folk. He opposed high tariffs and he called for an income tax, direct popular election of senators, a Department of Labor, prohibition, and women's suffrage. Out of office, he turned to journalism and lecturing and when he showed up at the Democratic national convention of 1896 and delivered his famous "Cross of Gold" speech on behalf of free silver, the agrarian West prevailed over the urban East and he ended up with the presidential nomination. He lost, as he would when he ran again in 1900 and 1908. After helping Woodrow Wilson gain the Democratic nomination in 1912, he became Wilson's secretary of state (1913); devoted to establishing arbitration as the solution to international disputes, he resigned in 1915 rather than go along with Wilson's belligerent warnings to Germany; when America entered World War I, however, he supported Wilson. In 1920 he moved to Florida where, participating in the real-estate boom, he made a fortune; he continued his career as a lecturer, known especially for his support of prohibition and of a literal interpretation of the Bible. It was in this last capacity that he made his final public appearance, speaking for the prosecution at the Scopes anti-evolution "monkey trial" in 1925.

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Bryan, William Jennings

(1860–1925) defended Creationism in famous Scopes trial. [Am. Hist.: NCE, 383–384]

See : Defender