The Bryan Campaign of 1896 and Connecticut's Democrats

By David M. Roth

The presidential campaign of 1896 is generally considered to have been a most crucial one in American history, often called the closest thing to a class war yet experienced in the nation's politics. The campaign, in addition, had critical repercussions in Connecticut politics—contributing significantly to a Democratic party debacle, the effects of which would be evident for decades.

The Republican presidential candidate in 1896 was William McKinley (1843-1901), an Ohioan who had served with distinction in the Civil War, had been a United States congressman from 1876 to 1890 (except for 1882), and had held the Ohio governorship in the early 1890s. McKinley ran on a Republican business-oriented platform that stressed a high protective tariff and sound money, i.e., the preservation of the gold standard.

The Democratic challenger, William Jennings Bryan (1860-1925), was a Nebraska lawyer, newspaperman, and former member of Congress whose candidacy was rooted in such agrarian ills in the 1880s and early 1890s as falling farm prices, deflation, high railroad charges, high interest rates, and high prices which had to be paid for the manufactured goods the farmer purchased. These conditions among the farmers of the West and South spawned the Populist party in the early 1890s. The Populists demanded the public ownership of utilities; increased democratization of American government via the popular election of U.S. senators, the secret ballot, the initiative, and the referendum; and the free and unlimited coinage of silver as a device to increase the currency in circulation and thus to ease the farmers' extrication from growing debt. In the 1892 presidential election the Populist candidate, General James B. Weaver (1833-1912) of Iowa, won more than a million popular votes and twenty-two votes in the Electoral College, carrying Colorado, Idaho, Nevada, and Kansas.

Between the presidential years of 1892 and 1896 the Populist inflationary demand for the unlimited coinage of silver at the ratio of sixteen ounces of silver to one of gold won many converts, especially in the West and South. One such convert was Democrat Bryan, who was elected to Congress in 1890 and 1892 and later edited the Omaha World-Herald.

At the Democratic National Convention in Chicago in July 1896, free silver advocates from the West and South were in control of the Convention but were without a presidential candidate. Then lightning struck. Delegate-at-Large Bryan electrified the Convention with his "Cross of Gold" speech. With his booming voice reaching throughout the packed hall, Bryan thundered for the coinage of silver and challenged the advocates of the gold standard:

You come to us and tell us that the great cities are in favor of the gold standard. We reply that the great cities rest upon our broad and fertile prairies. Burn down your cities and leave our farms, and your cities will spring up again as if by magic; but destroy our farms and grass will grow in the streets of every city in the country.

Bryan not only won the Democratic presidential nomination but was subsequently endorsed by the National Silver Republicans and the Populists.

Bryan went on to conduct one of the most remarkable campaigns in American history. The 36-year-old "Boy Orator of the Platte" traveled 13,000 miles in 14 weeks and made 600 speeches—36 in one day. Bryan lashed out at the trusts, the railroads, the industrialists, and most especially, at the financiers, those who were enjoying the profits of high interest rates and deflation.

The Republican campaign featured McKinley greeting visitors on the front porch of his home in Canton, Ohio, while Mark Hanna (1837-1904) engineered and financed a vicious assault on Bryan. Hanna, an Ohio businessman who was behind the McKinley boom for president from its inception in 1894, built up a campaign fund of over $7 million and used it to brand Bryan an anarchist/revolutionist who would destroy private property and bring industrial America to its knees.

In Connecticut, as in much of the industrial East, the Hanna assault on Bryan was hugely successful. The middle class apparently was convinced that Bryan would endanger its property; workers were told that Bryan would mean dead smokestacks and closed factories, and the state's farmers were warned that Bryan in the White House would strengthen farmers in the West already providing tough competition for Connecticut's agrarians. The easy McKinley victory in the nation was certainly reflected in the Connecticut election figures. Of some 175,000 votes cast for president in Connecticut in 1896, Bryan received only some 55,000, providing McKinley with a winning percentage in the state of more than 63 percent.

Of more significance than the fact that Bryan was thumped in 1896 in  Connecticut was that the Bryan campaign wrecked the Democratic party in the state and left it impotent for a generation. Believing that silver at 16 to 1 would debase the currency and convert their money into 50-cent dollars, most of Connecticut's leading Democrats left the party. Included among the leading Democrats who left the party in 1896 were the state party chairman and secretary, twelve of the twenty-four members of the state central committee, two former governors, four of the five Democrats who had been candidates for state office in the election of 1894, and a number of important Democrats in the General Assembly. These leading Democrats, most of whom sat at home, voted for McKinley, or supported the anti-Bryan "Gold Democrats," in many cases never returned to the Connecticut Democratic party. The result was that Connecticut's Republicans, united except for brief intraparty difficulties in 1910 and 1912, were able to call the tune for Connecticut from 1896 until the election of Wilbur Cross in 1930. The tune called by Connecticut Republicans in those years unfortunately did little to address the mounting problems faced by a state confronting the complexities of urbanization and industrialization.

For Further Reading

Heath, Frederick Morrison, "Politics and Steady Habits: Issues and Elections in Connecticut, 1894-1914." Unpublished Dissertation, Columbia University, 1965.

McSeveney, Samuel. The Politics of Depression: Political Behavior in the Northeast, 1893-1896. New York, 1972.

* Record under revision.