A Cross of Silver: The Presidential Election of 1896 and Its Consequences

This paper is about the importance of the U.S. presidential election of 1896. This election was possibly the only in American history in which a third party was effectively able to hijack the agenda of one of the country's major political parties (in this case, the Democrats). In a way, it is possible to see the election of 1896 as the Civil War, part 2, or maybe just another important *result* of the Civil War. The North created the "Popocrats" they so despised. In any case, the Populist movement is worth the study of anyone interested in progressive social movements. With the following points in mind, I'm considering titling the paper, "A Cross of Silver." This title is a riff on Bryan's famous speech at the 1896 Democratic Convention in which he declared, emphatically, dramatically, that the people on the periphery--workers and agrarians alike--should not be crucified upon "a cross of gold" for the benefit of the moneyed elite. Readers today might have difficulty understanding the emotion that surrounded the discussion of currency forms in the late nineteenth century. However, currency had both practical--indeed, life and death in the case of the agrarians--consequences, as well as deep-seated cultural meanings. The gold standard, the preference of the moneyed elite, also stood for the status quo and the comfort that not only the elites, but many of the middle and working class took in its apparent stability at a time of violently unstable economic change. When McKinley promised "prosperity" and "a full lunch pail" he was not speaking to those of his own class, but the workers who populated the factories of the industrial northern core of the economy. He never promised anything more than this. His "front-porch" campaign was low-key. Bryan, on the other hand spoke in grandiose and often apocalyptic terms. He wanted to change the world, and for the better. He also, like a fire-and-brimstone preacher, promised deadly consequences should the country continue to sacrifice its most vulnerable citizens to the "cross of gold."
However, the outcome was a loss. As a result, many historians describe this event as a tragedy, with Bryan as the tragic hero and McKinley as the villain. McKinley was the sensible, secular, common-sense candidate, whereas Bryan was the Christian reformer on a mission. Nietzsche had written that "God is dead" only a few decades before, and it can be argued that the result of the 1896 election supports his conclusion. Though firmly a Christian nation, Bryan's passion was excoriated in the urban press. He was not an honorable man of God; he was crazy and dangerous. 

Others even argue that American politics was irrevocably damaged after this election. Though progressive presidents would subsequently be elected, their politics would be the result of a top-down process, whereas Bryan was buoyed by the bottom-up swell of the Populist tide. The catalyst was the conflict between agrarians on the periphery and the railroads who were supported and represented by the moneyed elite. Most were “likely to be dependent on a single rail line and monopolistic or oligopolistic purchasers” (Sanders 29). They had little control over the price of their single cash crop, as prices were now set in a world market. The periphery agrarians were charged higher interest rates than farmers closer to the industrial core and were then “starved for credit in the long months between planting and harvest” (Sanders 29). The farmers on the periphery farmers were also more likely to be vulnerable to drought and insect damage, especially those in the South. “These were the conditions that predisposed periphery farmers to define their interests as antithetical to those of large industrialsts, bankers, and railroads and to look to the national state for solutions to their difficulties. As their distress intensified in the 1880s and 1890s, they undertook a broad evaluation of changes in the late-nineteenth-century economy and of what those changes meant, not only for farmers but also for other vulnerable groups. In particular, the agrarians reached out to factory, mine, mill, and railroad workers, who shared both their vulnerability to concentrated economic power and their vision of a more decentralized and egalitarian society in which the producers of the nation’s wealth would share more fully in its bounty. In the process, they constructed the most original and searching critique of industrial capitalism that American history has yet experienced and a political movement that mounted the broadest challenge to the foundations of the new economic system” (Sanders 29). “The year 1896, in short, saw the climax of Populism, the time of its greatest significance in American history” (Durden ix). The purpose of my paper, then, “is to show first that the Populists were not tricked into naming Bryan as their candidate and that there was no ‘conspiracy’ at the St. Louis convention. Rather, the Populists’ nomination of the Nebraskan Democrat was not only consistent with their principles but was essential if the party was to remain national in scope” (Durden ix). “That McKinley and the status quo triumphed over Bryan (Durden ix) and reform was not because of any failure of the Populists. They, together with their political allies for silver, concentrated their efforts in the campaign on the farmers and industrial workers in the pivotal north central states. And there, through circumstances largely beyond the control of the reform parties, the reformers lost their first great bid for progressive change” (Durden x). “Mostly farmers, the Populists were not spokesment for a static society, nor were they opposing and fleeing from the industrial future of the nature. They sought rather to capture federal power and use it both negatively to end economic abuses that had flourished since the Civil War and positively to improve the lot of the farmers and industrial workers of the land. The Populists failed in 1896—but their failure was by no means ignominious, and in one sense they triumphed at a later day when their reforms were introduced under other auspices and the “Pops” had become but a fading memory” (Durden xi).
There was a definite socialist influence, but the agrarians who would go on the found the Farmers Alliance quickly distanced themselves from socialism. They were, rather, Jeffersonian in influence. The Farmers Alliance would prove to be the most important organization that brought Bryan to power. It was also in bringing Bryan to power that the Farmers Alliance destroyed itself. Magliocci is a prominent historian in this camp. The Farmers alliance was not wholly in lockstep with regards to support for Bryan. Watson, prominently, continued to wage a vitriolic, third-party presidential campaign of his own at the same time that Bryan was trying to win votes across the country.

On the other hand, there are historians who argue that while the Populists lost the battle, they won the war in that their influence had a major effect on national policy in the twentieth century. Besides, argue these historians, had the Populists *not* chosen Bryan, they would have been doomed to obscurity. His influence, while it did not achieve the ultimate goal of presidency, *did* bring fame to the Populist cause, allowing it to be heard by masses who it might not have reached otherwise. Moreover, public policy makers were forced to reckon with the Populist demands. These historians argue that we should not be focusing so much on Bryan, because in doing so we lose the big picture of history. Bryan was just one bright star in a galaxy of activists who, throughout the late nineteenth century, worked on behalf of farmers in the periphery. Sanders is a prominent historian in this camp.

And then there are those who do not see Bryan as a hero--tragic or otherwise--but rather, a self-serving buffoon who threw the Populist movement under the bus. His compromise with the Republican party, to change from the gold standard to silver (as opposed to the paper money the "greenbacker" Populists wanted), sealed his, the party's and the nation's fate. To the die-hard Populists he didn't go far enough, while the Republicans thought he went too far. In between was a growing class of workers who didn't understand the politics of silver, but who very clearly heard the warnings of anarchy, poverty and punishment from their employers and newspapers. The backlash was significant: a ruthlessly conservative Supreme Court determined justice for generations. Some historians even link the rise of the Jim Crow South to Bryan's losing campaign. Hofstadter is a prominent historian in this camp.