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William Jennings Bryan: Boy Orator, Broken Man, and the University of Nebraska - Lincoln DigitalCommons@University of Nebraska - Lincoln Great Plains Quarterly Great Plains Studies, Center for May 2002 WILLIAM JENNINGS BRYAN: BOY ORATOR, BROKEN MAN, AND THE "EVOLUTION" OF AMERICA'S PUBLIC PHILOSOPHY Troy A. Murphy University of Michigan-Dearborn Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/greatplainsquarterly Part of the Other International and Area Studies Commons Murphy, Troy A., "WILLIAM JENNINGS BRYAN: BOY ORATOR, BROKEN MAN, AND THE "EVOLUTION" OF AMERICA'S PUBLIC PHILOSOPHY" (2002). Great Plains Quarterly. 40. https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/greatplainsquarterly/40 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Great Plains Studies, Center for at DigitalCommons@University of Nebraska - Lincoln. It has been accepted for inclusion in Great Plains Quarterly by an authorized administrator of DigitalCommons@University of Nebraska - Lincoln. Published in Great Plains Quarterly, vol. 22, no. 2 (Spring 2002). Published by the Center for Great Plains Studies, University of Nebraska–Lincoln. Copyright © 2000 Center for Great Plains Studies. Used by permission. WILLIAM JENNINGS BRYAN BOY ORATOR, BROKEN MAN, AND THE "EVOLUTION" OF AMERICA'S PUBLIC PHILOSOPHY TROY A. MURPHY He wanted our religion to rest on the basis of love and not on the basis of force; and, my friends, when we get down to the root of our government, and the root of our religion, we find that they alike rest on the doctrine of human brotherhood-"that all men are created equal." - William Jennings Bryan, on Thomas Jefferson1 If you would be entirely accurate you should represent me as using a double-barreled shot- gun, firing one barrel at the elephant as he tries to enter the treasury and another at Darwinism-the monkey-as he tries to enter the schoolroom. - William Jennings Bryan, on his own life's work2 Perhaps more than any other figure in Ameri- KEYWORDS: William Jennings Bryan, Cross of Gold speech, democracy, Populist myth, rhetoric, Scopes can history, William Jennings Bryan is remem- Trial bered for specific and identifiable moments of rhetorical action: the much-revered 1896 "Cross of Gold" speech and the much-maligned Troy A. Murphy is Assistant Professor ofCommunication Scopes "monkey trial" of 1925. The dissonance at the University of Michigan-Dearborn. He received his between these two events, at least with re- Ph.D. in Rhetoric and Public Argument from the University of Pittsburgh in 1998. He is the recipient of the spect to the ways in which political and rhe- Gerald R. Miller Outstanding Dissertation Award and torical history has traditionally recorded them, author of "American Political Mythology and the Senate could not be more striking. Bryan, the "Boy Filibuster" in Argumentation and Advocacy. Orator," was, at thirty-six years, the youngest and most left-leaning candidate ever to re- ceive a major party nomination for the US [GPQ 22 (Spring 2002): 83-98] presidency. He is often regarded as the founder 84 GREAT PLAINS QUARTERLY, SPRING 2002 presidential campaigning, and perhaps presi- dential governance, by making both candi- date and message more immediately accessible to the American public. For Bryan's many admirers, he was a man ahead of his time. As Myron Phillips put it simply, Bryan was born "thirty years too soon."5 Yet his performance as a witness in Tennes- see w. Scopes, the so-called trial of the century, engenders a much different perception of Wil- liam Jennings Bryan. When, in the final scene of lnherit the Wind,Spencer Tracy laments that "there was much greatness in the man," view- ers of the film version of the Scopes trial are left wondering what that greatness might have been or how a fall from grace might have oc- curred so dramatically. According to both popular lore and most standard histories of the trial, Bryan revealed himself as a woefully ignorant leader of small-minded fundamen- talism, a man whose rigid interpretation of the Bible exemplified a backward defense of a long-past ethic. H. L. Mencken referred to Bryan variously as a "zany," a "mountebank," "a peasant come home to the barnyard," and a FIG. 1. The Honorable William Jennings Bryan, 1890. Courtesy of the Nebraska State Historical "poor clod . deluded by a childish theol- Society. ~g~."~The Nation described Bryan's perfor- mance as that of a "pitifully ignorant old man."' Taking his cue from Paul Anderson's widely circulated reporting on the trial, which pro- claimed that "Bryan was broken, if ever a man of the modern Democratic party if not much was broken," rhetorical scholar Michael of modern liberalism. The causes for which Hostetler describes the various characteriza- the former Nebraska congressman and three- tions of Bryan's ostensible demise in the Scopes time presidential candidate fought anticipated trial as the "broken man narrative."$ This and buttressed many of the Progressive Era's narrative not only interrogates Bryan's intel- largest accomplishments. Years after Bryan's ligence on the witness stand and his funda- death, Herbert Hoover would note his legacy mentalist Christian beliefs, but is premised on with some bitterness, saying that Franklin D. an underlying assumption that his anti-evolu- Roosevelt's New Deal was merely "Bryanism tion crusade was contrary if not antithetical under new words and methods."j Bryan would to the progressive causes he so famously cham- make a distinctively rhetorical mark as well. pioned for decades. In the influential Ameri- Michael Kazin calls him the first "celebrity can Political Tradition, Richard Hofstadter ends politician," a man whose oratorical skills his scathing critique of Bryan with a disdain- earned him a massive and loyal following of ful view as simple as Phillips's was admiring, supporters willing to travel miles just to hear saying that Bryan "had long outlived his time."9 him speak.4 His barnstorming campaign prac- The popular images of William Jennings tices and popular rhetoric changed the face of Bryan that resonate throughout history are at WILLIAM JENNINGS BRYAN 85 times as contradictory yet oddly informative saliency of which is dependent on the politi- as applying the adjective "great" to the noun cal and rhetorical context in which democratic "commoner" to describe him. Certainly, the claims are made. I conclude the analysis of labels "boy orator" and "broken man" are cari- Bryan's democracy by suggesting how the ide- catures of Bryan and his career in public life. als he articulated continue to resonate today, Yet history nonetheless has been inclined to albeit in much different political and rhetori- distinguish between a "good" and a "bad" cal forms. Before illustrating how Bryan at- Bryan, or an "early" and a "late" one.1° Indeed, tempts to define the preferred character of the ostensible transformation from the silver- democracy in both the 1896 campaign and tongued "Boy Orator of the Platte" to the dis- the Scopes trial of 1925, I begin by noting the credited and ignorant "broken man" has importance of viewing democracy as an inher- enough holding power to warrant an exami- ently rhetorical enterprise. nation of its causes and a rhetorical assessment of the events most central to its constitution. DEMOCRACY,RHETORIC, AND I argue here that at the heart of the trans- AMERICA'SPUBLIC PHILOSOPHY formation lies a consistency. By examining the "Cross of Gold" speech delivered at the 1896 Democracy is more than a form of govern- Democratic convention and the "On Evolu- ment. It is also an idea. In his cultural history tion" speech prepared and widely distributed of American democracy, Robert Weibe traces after the Scopes trial, I mean to highlight the the historical ambiguity associated with the ways in which these texts rhetorically create a meaning of democracy and how it has oper- consonant vision of democracy that is ated as an idea throughout American history. grounded in the republican ideals of agrarian Calling it "America's most distinguishing char- community." Bryan's populist rhetoric con- acteristic," Weibe wryly comments that sistently defends a democratic ideal, expressed "Americans act as if democracy were too im- in part through the nobility of "plain people" portant to define."14 The absence of a consen- and the moral fabric of agrarian communities, sus definition is certainly not for lack of trying. against the attacks of a rapidly changing world Virtually every major political figure and so- and the "force" of a supposed elite, whether cial movement has in some way attempted to those elites are the bankers of 1896 or the utilize the ideals associated with the term to scientists of 1925. their rhetorical advantage. As an idea marked Highlighting a measure of consistency in by such rhetorical elasticity, the ambiguous Bryan's rhetorical battles against both "gold" and malleable meaning of democracy is per- and "evolution" is not intended simply to re- haps best understood by the discourse used to vise or reclaim a reputation destroyed by what define it within specific historical contexts. Edward Larson calls the "legend" of the Scopes Historian Russell Hanson concurs on the trial.'' Rather, the consistency in Bryan's vi- centrality of discourse in understanding de- sion of democracy illustrates an enduring strain mocracy, arguing that American democracy is of democratic discourse that yearns for and itself a rhetorical tradition. While admitting attempts to defend a communal and moral di- that "to speak of liberal democracy as a rhe- mension of democracy against a "public phi- torical tradition may seem a bit odd," Hanson losophy" of political liberalism that emphasizes insists that understanding American democ- individual rights and "brackets" such issues racy by the discourse used to define it provides from public discussi~n.'~Bryan's fundamen- a historical specificity lacking in other forms talism or anti-evolution crusade need not be of analysis.
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