rather than our national liberties should be destroyed”). In Kansas, the third party was known as the People’s Party, and in 1892 that name was adopted by the new national party—and its candidate polled more than a million votes, and twenty-two electoral votes (because in the South the Populists, as they were becoming known, refused in general to play white-supremacist politics, all twenty-two were in the mountain states, where they not only elected two Governors but captured twice as many counties as both major parties combined and in a single election established themselves as the majority party). Except for the Republicans, no new party had ever done so well in its first bid for national power. In the Congressional elections of 1894, the Populists rolled up more than a million and a half votes, making heavy inroads into the Democratic vote in the South and West, and it appeared likely that theincreasing number of Democrats who saw silver as the crucial issue would desert the Democratic Party in 1896 and make the Populists a major party in America—after all, an analogous situation in the 1850’s had resulted in the demise of the Whigs and the creation of the Republican Party.
Instead, there was Bryan. As trainload after trainload of cheering delegates arrived at the Democratic convention in Chicago, silver badges gleaming from their lapels, silver banners fluttering in the breeze, the
New York World
said, “They have the principle, they have the grit, they have the brass bands and the buttons, they have the votes. But they are wandering in the wilderness like a lot of lost sheep, because no … real leader has yet appeared among them.” Then, when one after another of the silver movement’s would-be leaders had proved, during the debate on the party platform, that the
World
was right, young Democrat William Jennings Bryan nervously made his way up the aisle and, speaking on behalf of farmers against Eastern interests, said, “We have petitioned, and our petitions have been scorned; we have entreated and our entreaties have been disregarded; we have begged, and they have mocked when our calamity came. We beg no longer; we entreat no more; we petition no more.
We defy them!
” Suddenly the mighty throng of 20,000 sweltering men and women were on their feet, cheering each sentence with a roar—even before the last sentences:
Burn down your cities and leave our farms, and your cities will spring up again as if by magic; but destroy our farms and the grass will grow in the streets of every city in the country. … Having behind us the producing masses of the nation and the world, supported by the commercial interests, and the toilers everywhere, we will answer their demand for a gold standard by saying to them: You shall not press down upon the brow of labor this crown of thorns, you shall not crucify mankind upon a cross of gold!
The silver Democrats did not leave the Democratic Party but took it over instead; “the Boy Orator of the Platte” became the party’s Presidential nominee.
Ironically, however, this development was to mark the doom of the People’s Party: the Democrats had stolen the Populists’ thunder; at their own convention three weeks later, the Populists had little choice but to nominate Bryan, too, and thus lose their identity as a separate party. And the party with which they had allied themselves lost the election. The Bryan race for President was more a cause than a campaign. “A religious frenzy” was what William Allen White of Kansas called it. “Sacred hymns were torn from their pious tunes to give place to words which deified the cause and made gold—and all its symbols, capital, wealth, plutocracy—diabolical. At night, from ten thousand little white schoolhouse windows, lights twinkled back vain hope to the stars.” But the hope was vain; the cause was as lost as theone for which many of the Populists had fought thirty years before—Bryan’s campaign was gallant but
Instead, there was Bryan. As trainload after trainload of cheering delegates arrived at the Democratic convention in Chicago, silver badges gleaming from their lapels, silver banners fluttering in the breeze, the
New York World
said, “They have the principle, they have the grit, they have the brass bands and the buttons, they have the votes. But they are wandering in the wilderness like a lot of lost sheep, because no … real leader has yet appeared among them.” Then, when one after another of the silver movement’s would-be leaders had proved, during the debate on the party platform, that the
World
was right, young Democrat William Jennings Bryan nervously made his way up the aisle and, speaking on behalf of farmers against Eastern interests, said, “We have petitioned, and our petitions have been scorned; we have entreated and our entreaties have been disregarded; we have begged, and they have mocked when our calamity came. We beg no longer; we entreat no more; we petition no more.
We defy them!
” Suddenly the mighty throng of 20,000 sweltering men and women were on their feet, cheering each sentence with a roar—even before the last sentences:
Burn down your cities and leave our farms, and your cities will spring up again as if by magic; but destroy our farms and the grass will grow in the streets of every city in the country. … Having behind us the producing masses of the nation and the world, supported by the commercial interests, and the toilers everywhere, we will answer their demand for a gold standard by saying to them: You shall not press down upon the brow of labor this crown of thorns, you shall not crucify mankind upon a cross of gold!
The silver Democrats did not leave the Democratic Party but took it over instead; “the Boy Orator of the Platte” became the party’s Presidential nominee.
Ironically, however, this development was to mark the doom of the People’s Party: the Democrats had stolen the Populists’ thunder; at their own convention three weeks later, the Populists had little choice but to nominate Bryan, too, and thus lose their identity as a separate party. And the party with which they had allied themselves lost the election. The Bryan race for President was more a cause than a campaign. “A religious frenzy” was what William Allen White of Kansas called it. “Sacred hymns were torn from their pious tunes to give place to words which deified the cause and made gold—and all its symbols, capital, wealth, plutocracy—diabolical. At night, from ten thousand little white schoolhouse windows, lights twinkled back vain hope to the stars.” But the hope was vain; the cause was as lost as theone for which many of the Populists had fought thirty years before—Bryan’s campaign was gallant but
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