American history is filled with interesting cultural changes and transformations. While we focus rightly most of our attention on the founding era or the War Between the States, other time periods are also important for understanding how the United States came to be what it is today. One such time period is the years between 1880 and 1920, which historians usually refer to as the Progressive Era. This historical moment, which is often overlooked in our high school and college courses, was filled with many important changes. Understanding them can help us to grasp better the development of secularism and big government in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.
The Progressive Era
After the official end of Reconstruction in the South, Americans were focused on putting the Civil War behind them as quickly as possible.[1] In the urban centers of the North, industrialists were amassing unprecedented wealth while common laborers grew increasingly dissatisfied with the conditions in factories and the pay they received for such dangerous labor.[2] In addition, rural areas throughout the country felt the worst aspects of the economic booms and busts of the late nineteenth century. American Christianity was facing the painful onslaught of modernism, leading some Christians to adopt either Liberal Protestantism on the one hand or revivalist piety on the other.
In response to these changes, many lower income Americans turned to the federal government for shelter from the forces of big business, world markets, and modernism. During this transitional period, the Democratic Party transformed from the party of small government and states’ rights to the big-government, socially progressive, reformist party of Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882–1945). Perhaps no public figure was more influential in leading this change than William Jennings Bryan (1860–1925).
Early Life
Bryan came to prominence as one of the Progressive era’s most influential and controversial early leaders. Biographer Michael Kazin argues that Bryan was a public icon of a “creed” that “married democracy and pietism in a romantic gospel that borrowed equally from Jefferson and Jesus.”[3] Bryan’s humble beginnings in Illinois and Nebraska were followed by a lifetime of political leadership and confrontation. Though he served as the Democratic party’s unsuccessful presidential nominee three times, Kazin contends that Bryan “did more than any other man—between the fall of Grover Cleveland and the election of Woodrow Wilson—to transform his party from a bulwark of laissez-faire [economics] into the citadel of liberalism we identify with Franklin D. Roosevelt and his ideological descendants.”[4] However, Bryan’s influence was also a reflection of broader trends in the American public that were powerful until the conclusion of World War I (1914–18).
Kazin emphasizes Bryan’s essential character as that of the common man. Bryan grew up in segregated Illinois in a middle class family of Democrats. His early life was filled with Christianity, education, and politics. However, his exposure to Christianity was banal, to say the least. As a young adult, he joined the Cumberland Presbyterian Church, though his religious allegiance was more broadly evangelical. While attending Illinois College, Bryan first came in contact with evolutionary models that “raised doubts in [his] mind about the truth of Genesis.”[5]
During his time at Illinois College, Bryan was also introduced to Christian reformist ideas. Christian reformism was an outgrowth of the millennial strains in revivalism that focused on reforming and restructuring society in fundamental ways believed to be more Biblical. Thus, Christian reformists were deeply invested in social movements like feminism, temperance, and public education. Indeed, Christian reformism laid the foundation for the advent of the Social Gospel, which focused on reforming society rather than on winning souls.
These ideas greatly influenced Bryan who quickly adopted several reformist social goals. While Bryan’s flirtation with religious skepticism ended quickly, the ideas of the Social Gospel took hold in his mind and guided his life and career going forward.
Bryan was drawn to politics during the 1880s, difficult years for the Democratic Party, which was developing a major ideological split. The “Bourbon elite” in the North and Northeast were conservative business leaders concerned with protecting states and the economy from federal intervention. However, dissatisfaction with this old guard began to surface among rural and southern Democrats who sought federal intervention in economic and social issues. These insurgent reformers were concerned about many things during the last decades of the nineteenth century, but the power of financers, businesses, and banks dominated their fears.
Bryan’s early political career channeled these concerns as he lambasted tariffs, trusts, and the gold standard. His focus on expanding the currency to include silver was particularly important and became his most recognizable policy platform during his early career. Bryan’s oratorical skill quickly made him a crowd favorite in Nebraska and then around the country. His oratory drew new members into the reforming wing of the Democratic Party.
Bryan’s career in politics was filled with both success and frustration. His career in federal politics began in 1890 when he was elected to Congress from Nebraska. As Speaker of the House from 1891 to 1894, Bryan began crafting a political platform, including the passage of the income tax, direct election of U. S. Senators, the “free silver” standard, state owned railroads, and the repeal of tariffs, that he would continue to support for the rest of his career. Though Bryan’s ability to enact these policies was limited during his time as Speaker, he brought them before the public consciousness and embedded them within the Democratic Party. His influence expanded during his three failed presidential races as the Democratic nominee in 1896, 1900, and 1908.
The highlight of his three presidential campaigns was Bryan’s “cross of gold” speech at the 1896 convention that won him the nomination. At the time, the United States dollar derived its value from gold. This steadied the value of the dollar and the economy and also made for a strong dollar. Nevertheless, Bryan and a few others advocated for allowing silver bullion to be included in valuing the dollar. This would have devalued the dollar by promoting investment and making it easier for small farmers to pay off the mortgages on their farms. So Bryan pursued “free silver” as a means of relieving the economic strains of small-hold farmers and wage laborers. During his 1896 “cross of gold” speech, Bryan made his position abundantly clear by forcefully arguing that rural farmers and blue-collar workers were businessmen too, selling their labor. The culmination of this speech highlights Bryan’s rhetorical mastery and populist appeal:
“Having behind us the producing masses of this nation and the world, supported by the commercial interests, the laboring interests, and the toilers everywhere,” he declared, before raising his hands to his temples and stretching his fingers out along his forehead for the penultimate phrase, “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 man upon a cross of gold.” As he spoke the final words . . . he stepped back from the podium, pulled his hands away from his brow, and extended them straight out from his body—and held the Christlike pose for perhaps five seconds.[6]
The crowd in Chicago for the inauguration convention erupted in raw, jittering cheers that filled the Coliseum. There was no doubt who would represent the Democrats in the general election.
While each of his presidential campaigns was unsuccessful in the ballot box, Kazin argues that Bryan was systematically maneuvering the Democrat party toward populist reforms. Bryan’s efforts finally came to their fullest realization under the presidency of Woodrow Wilson (1856–1924). Wilson’s election in 1912 was helped in no small part by the support of Bryan over and against the Bourbons of Tammany Hall and the Northeast. Wilson returned the favor by naming Bryan Secretary of State.
Bryan used his influence to push through a slew of reformist legislation (including the sixteenth and seventeenth amendments) that would not be matched until the New Deal. However, Kazin argues that Bryan’s “twenty-seven months in Wilson’s cabinet marked a decisive turn downward in Bryan’s career.”[7] The looming threat of war led Bryan to break with Wilson even though they shared similar idealistic visions for foreign affairs.
Bryan’s life and legacy came to a difficult end in Dayton, Tennessee, with the Scopes Monkey trial of 1925. Bryan served as the prosecution in the case against substitute high school teacher John Scopes who was accused of teaching Darwinian evolution in a Tennessee public school. Kazin argues that Bryan’s legacy has been dominated by this event for which he was uniquely unsuited.
While Bryan was an adept lawyer and won the case, his time on the stand during the last day of the trial revealed his dearth of theological and scientific knowledge.[8] Called to testify as a witness by grandstanding defense lawyers, Bryan was forcefully cross examined about his belief in creation as opposed to Darwinian evolution. Unfortunately, Bryan’s committed faith in the inerrancy of the Bible was not bolstered by careful thinking or good scholarship. He was the representative of the common man, who had no doubts about the historical and scientific veracity of the creation narrative. But this also meant that he was susceptible to appearing foolish in the face of the scholarly and advanced questions of his interlocutors. The national media were on hand and made much of the trial. In the end, even though Bryan won the trial, he lost the public relations battle. In some ways, that trial set the tone for how the American public and mass media think of conservative Christians and creationists even today.
Conclusion
The late
nineteenth century was a fluid time, filled with economic, political,
religious, and social changes. America slowly and almost secretly shifted from
a nation of independent, Christian, yeoman farmers and laborers to a society of
modern urban laborers and white collar workers with little faith in the
historic doctrines of the Christian church. William Jennings Bryan saw some of
the changes that were coming and tried to hold them off to the best of his
ability. However, by using the federal government and mass media to achieve his
goals, he inadvertently accelerated the development of these looming problems
in America. Revivalist piety and populist government proved incapable of
realizing the millennium.
[1]David Blight, Race and Reunion: The Civil War in American Memory (Cambridge, MA: Belknap, 2001), 2–3.
[2]Charles Postel, The Populist Vision (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007), vii.
[3]Michael Kazin, A Godly Hero: The Life of William Jennings Bryan (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2006), xiv.
[4]Ibid., xix.
[5]Ibid., 9.
[6]Ibid., 61.
[7]Ibid., 219.
[8]Ibid., 293.
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