William Jennings Bryan

William Jennings Bryan (born March 19, 1860, Salem, Illinois, U.S.—died July 26, 1925, Dayton, Tennessee) was a Democratic and Populist leader and a magnetic orator who ran unsuccessfully three times for the U.S. presidency (1896, 1900, and 1908). His enemies regarded him as an ambitious demagogue, but his supporters viewed him as a champion of liberal causes. He was influential in the eventual adoption of such reforms as popular election of senators, income tax, creation of the Department of Labor, Prohibition, and women’s suffrage. Throughout his career, his Midwestern roots clearly identified him with agrarian interests, in opposition to those of the urban East.

Early life

Bryan was born and raised in Salem, Illinois, where his father, Silas Bryan, was a lawyer, school superintendent, and local politician. William Jennings Bryan’s father was a Baptist, and his mother, Mariah E. Bryan (née Jennings) was a Methodist; together they kept an intensely religious home. William Jennings Bryan converted to Presbyterianism when he was in his early teens. He graduated from Illinois College in 1881 and from the Union College of Law in 1883. Following graduation, Bryan practiced law in Jacksonville (1883–87) before moving to Lincoln, Nebraska. There he was elected to the U.S. Congress in 1890 and served two terms. Renowned as a gifted debater, he opposed high tariffs and came to be considered the national leader of the Free Silver Movement (bimetallism) as opposed to the “hard money” policy of the Eastern bankers and industrialists, who favored the gold standard.

Three-time presidential nominee

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Defeated for the U.S. Senate in 1894, Bryan spent the next two years as editor of the Omaha World-Herald and as a popular public lecturer. The climax of his career was undoubtedly his 1896 presidential campaign. At the Democratic convention in Chicago, his famous “Cross of Gold” speech (July 8) won him the nomination at the age of 36.

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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.

His solution for the depressed economy after the panic of 1893 was an “easy money” policy based on the unlimited coinage of silver at a ratio to gold of 16 to 1. On that platform he also received the nominations of the Populist and National Silver parties. In the ensuing campaign, he traveled more than 18,000 miles (29,000 km) through 27 states and attracted a large and enthusiastic following, but the well-financed Republican machine won 271 electoral votes for William McKinley to Bryan’s 176. Bryan lost to McKinley again in 1900 and to William Howard Taft in 1908.

Learn more about the U.S. presidential elections for 1896, 1900, and 1908.

U.S. Secretary of State

In recognition of his role in securing the Democratic nomination for Woodrow Wilson in 1912, Bryan was appointed secretary of state the following year. Despite his diplomatic inexperience, he made a distinctive contribution to world law by espousing arbitration to prevent war. Bryan convinced 31 nations to agree in principle to his proposal of new treaties that would provide a “cooling-off” period of one year during which a question in dispute could be studied by an international commission. In the meantime, World War I broke out. An avowed pacifist, Bryan finally resigned over Wilson’s second note to Germany (June 8, 1915) protesting the sinking of the Lusitania. Nonetheless, he urged loyal support of the war when it was finally declared.

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Social and religious crusader

Throughout his political career and after he left public office, Bryan traveled extensively, delivering lectures on the causes that he championed, including prohibition, women’s suffrage, and opposition to Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution. His objections to evolution were rooted in both religious conviction and social philosophy. As a Christian fundamentalist, Bryan believed in the literal word of the Bible. As a populist, he was opposed to the “survival-of-the-fittest” mentality that was at the core of evolutionary theory. Critics of social Darwinism argued that this theory allowed industrialists to justify a laissez-faire approach to capitalism that favored monied interests over workers. As early as 1904 Bryan denounced Darwinism as “the merciless law by which the strong crowd out and kill off the weak.” In the early 1920s Bryan began advocating for legislation to ban the teaching of evolution in public schools—a campaign that perfectly positioned him as a central figure in the Scopes Trial.

Scopes Trial

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The July 1925 Scopes Trial (formally State of Tennessee v. John T. Scopes, derisively known as the “Monkey Trial”) was one of the century’s most iconic legal confrontations and the concluding episode of Bryan’s life. He went to Dayton, Tennessee, to assist in the prosecution of John T. Scopes, a high-school coach and schoolteacher accused of teaching evolutionary theory, rather than the doctrine of divine creation, a violation of Tennessee state law. With Clarence Darrow—a celebrated agnostic and the country’s most prominent criminal defense attorney—leading Scopes’s legal team, the trial attracted worldwide attention as a dramatic duel between fundamentalism and modernism.

During the court proceedings, Darrow called Bryan to the stand as an expert on the Bible, subjecting him to intense scrutiny on scriptural literalism. The exchange exposed contradictions in Bryan’s biblical beliefs and damaged his credibility. Scopes was found guilty and fined (later overturned by the Tennessee state Supreme Court on a technicality). Although Bryan’s prosecution secured a legal victory for the state, public perception favored Darrow’s defense. Bryan was in poor health before the trial, and the excesses and passions of the court battle took their toll: He died in his sleep mere days after the verdict.