United States presidential election, 1896
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The U.S. presidential election of 1896 saw Republican William McKinley defeat Democrat William Jennings Bryan in a contest considered by historians to be the hardest fought in American history. In political science it is often considered a realigning election. McKinley forged a coalition in which businessmen, professionals, skilled workers and prosperous farmers were heavily represented; he was strongest in the Northeast. Bryan was the nominee of the Democrats, the Populists, and the Silver Republicans, forged a coalition of outsiders that dominated the Democratic party for decades. Economic issues, including bimetallism, the gold standard, Free Silver, and the tariff, were crucial. Republican campaign manager Mark Hanna invented many modern campaign techniques, facilitated by a $3.5 million budget. He outspent Bryan by a factor of ten. The Democratic Party's repudiation of the Bourbon Democrats (their pro-business wing, represented by incumbent President Grover Cleveland), set the stage for sixteen years of Republican control of the White House, ended only by a Republican split in 1912 that resulted in the election of Woodrow Wilson.
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[edit] Background
Incumbent President Grover Cleveland's second administration had been marked by a severe economic depression called the Panic of 1893. Cleveland had attempted to combat this depression through monetary policy and had gotten Congress to repeal the Sherman Silver Purchase Act of 1890. What this law had done was set the United States on a bimetallic standard in which the dollar was pegged to both silver and gold and the value of silver was pegged at 16 troy ounces of silver to 1 troy ounce of gold. There were a few problems with this law. First, it was inflationary, as miners in the American West were steadily extracting large amounts of silver. Second, because of the oversupply of silver, Gresham's Law dictated that gold was driven out of circulation. Worse, since most other countries in the world were on a gold standard, the United States needed a gold reserve for international trade, and the Sherman Act was rapidly draining that reserve.
Unfortunately for Cleveland, this law caused a split within the Democratic party. Miners in the West loved the Sherman Act because it made their silver more valuable. Farmers in the Midwest and South loved the Sherman Act because the inflation caused by the Act lowered their debts. Moreover, many of Cleveland's actions, such as selling government bonds to New York financiers in an attempt to tighten the currency, could easily be demagogued as pandering to business interests (what we would call “special interests” today), and the demagogues asserted that a gold standard helped only the wealthy East Coast elites. Agrarians in the South and West mobilized to gain control of the Democratic party.
[edit] Nominations
[edit] Democratic Party nomination
When the Democrats met for their convention in Chicago, most of the Southern and Western delegates were committed to restoring free silver. The convention repudiated Cleveland's gold standard policies and then repudiated Cleveland himself. This, however, left the convention wide open: there was no obvious successor to Cleveland.
At just 36 years old, Nebraska's William Jennings Bryan filled the void, attracting widespread support after delivering his famous "Cross of Gold" speech prior to delegate balloting. Bryan's stance unified splintered Democrats and earned him the presidential nomination, defeating Seymour F. Norton by a 3-to-1 margin, Arthur Sewall was chosen the vice presidential nominee.
[edit] Republican Party nomination
As they did in 1876 and 1880, the Republicans dipped into the talent pool that was the Governor's office of Ohio to nominate William McKinley of Niles, Ohio for President, and New Jersey's Garret Hobart for Vice President. With the platform calling for strong support for the gold standard, many Western Republicans walked out of the convention in Saint Louis to form the National Silver Party supporting the Democrats.
McKinley campaign manager Mark Hanna went to big business and major banks and raised a staggering $3.5 million for the campaign, outspending the Democrats by an estimated 10-to-1 margin.
[edit] Other nominations
The Republicans and Democrats were joined by more "third party" candidates than ever before in 1896, with the Socialist Labor, Prohibition, National Prohibition and National Democratic parties each offering tickets for President and Vice President. The Populist Party nominated Bryan, but offered their own Vice Presidential choice, Thomas E. Watson of Georgia. Cleveland Democrats who supported the gold standard and limited government bolted from the Democratic convention and nominated a National Democratic Party (United States) (or "Gold Democratic") ticket headed by John M. Palmer a former governor of Illinois and Simon Bolivar Buckner, Sr., a former governor of Kentucky.
[edit] General election
[edit] Campaign
While the Republicans began by pushing their tariff policy again, the gold standard became the dominant issue of the campaign. Bryan traveled across the Midwest, giving over 500 speeches in 100 days to audiences that totaled in the millions.
McKinley brought 500,000 voters by train to his front porch in Canton, Ohio. Helped by Hanna's fund-raising, McKinley counter-crusaded, calling Bryan's proposals a serious threat to the modern economy. With the depression following the Panic of 1893 coming to an end, support for McKinley's more conservative policy increased, while Bryan's policies began to seem more radical and alarming. McKinley gained a solid victory, carrying the core of the East and Northeast, while Bryan did well only among the farmers of the South and West. German Americans switched to McKinley, who gained large majorities among the middle class, skilled workers, railroad workers, and more commercially oriented farmers.
[edit] Results
(The addition of Utah earlier in the year raised the number of states participating to 45)
| Presidential Candidate | Party | Home State | Popular Vote | Electoral Vote | Running Mate | Running Mate's Home State |
Running Mate's Electoral Vote |
|
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Count | Percentage | |||||||
| William McKinley | Republican | Ohio | 7,112,138 | 51.0% | 271 | Garret Augustus Hobart | New Jersey | 271 |
| William Jennings Bryan | Democratic/ Populist |
Nebraska | 6,508,172 | 46.7% | 176 | Arthur Sewall(a) | Maine | 149 |
| Thomas Edward Watson(b) | Georgia | 27 | ||||||
| John McAuley Palmer | National Democratic | Illinois | 133,730 | 1.0% | 0 | Simon Bolivar Buckner | Kentucky | 0 |
| Joshua Levering | Prohibition | Maryland | 125,088 | 0.9% | 0 | Hale Johnson | Illinois | 0 |
| Charles Horatio Matchett | Socialist Labor | New York | 36,359 | 0.3% | 0 | Matthew Maguire | New Jersey | 0 |
| Charles Eugene Bentley | National | Nebraska | 19,391 | 0.1% | 0 | James Southgate | North Carolina | 0 |
| Other | 1,570 | 0.0% | 0 | Other | 0 | |||
| Total | 13,936,448 | 100.0% | 447 | Total | 447 | |||
| Needed to win | 224 | Needed to win | 224 | |||||
Source (Popular Vote): Leip, David. 1896 Presidential Election Results. Dave Leip's Atlas of U.S. Presidential Elections (August 5, 2005).
Source (Electoral Vote): Electoral College Box Scores 1789–1996. Official website of the National Archives. (July 31, 2005).
(a) Sewall was Bryan's Democratic running mate.
(b) Watson was Bryan's Populist running mate.
[edit] See also
- American election campaigns in the 19th century
- History of the United States (1865–1918)
- Political interpretations of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz
- Third Party System
- United States House election, 1896
[edit] References
- Books
-
- Coletta, Paolo E. (1964). William Jennings Bryan, Political Evangelist, vol. 1, University of Nebraska Press.
- Fite, Gilbert C. (2001). "The Election of 1896", in Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., ed.: History of American Presidential Elections, vol. 2.
- Glad, Paul W. (1964). McKinley, Bryan, and the People.
- William D. Harpine. From the Front Porch to the Front Page: McKinley and Bryan in the 1896 Presidential Campaign (2006) focus on the speeches and rhetoric
- Jensen, Richard J. (1971). The Winning of the Midwest: Social and Political Conflict 1888–1896.
- Kazin, Michael. A Godly Hero: The Life of William Jennings Bryan (2006).
- Williams, R. Hal (1978). Years of Decision: American Politics in the 1890s.
- Jones, Stanley L. (1964). The Presidential Election of 1896.
- Journal articles
-
- James A. Barnes, "Myths of the Bryan Campaign," Mississippi Valley Historical Review, 34 (Dec. 1947) online in JSTOR
- David T. Beito and Linda Royster Beito, "Gold Democrats and the Decline of Classical Liberalism, 1896-1900,"Independent Review 4 (Spring 2000), 555-75.
- Gilbert C. Fite. "Republican Strategy and the Farm Vote in the Presidential Campaign of 1896" in American Historical Review, Vol. 65, No. 4 (Jul., 1960) , pp. 787-806 online in JSTOR
- Jeansonne, Glen. "Goldbugs, Silverites, and Satirists: Caricature and Humor in the Presidential Election of 1896." Journal of American Culture 1988 11(2): 1-8. ISSN 0191-1813
- Kelly, Patrick J. (2003). "The Election of 1896 and the Restructuring of Civil War Memory". Civil War History 49.
- Mahan, Russell L. (2003). "William Jennings Bryan and the Presidential Campaign of 1896". White House Studies 3.
[edit] Primary sources
- Books
-
- Bryan, William Jennings. The First Battle: A Story of the Campaign of 1896 (1897), speeches from 1896 campaign.
- National Democratic Committee (1896). Campaign Text-book of the National Democratic Party.
- This is the handbook of the Gold Democrats and strongly opposed Bryan.
- Journal articles
-
- Chandler, William E. (August 1896). "Issues and Prospects of the Campaign". North American Review 163 (2): 171–182.
- Quincy, Josiah (August 1896). "Issues and Prospects of the Campaign". North American Review 163 (2): 182–195.
[edit] External links
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