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A Righteous Cause: The Life of William Jennings Bryan

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This brief, concise review of the life of William Jennings Bryan is a quick and easy way to familiarize yourself with this important American politician. While Bryan's only official politrical positions was as a two-term congressman and secretary of state for a little over two years, he was one of the most influential politicians for the thirty years he was active in Democratic politics. The three-time losing presidential candidate popularized (thought did not originate) many of the progressive issues of the period, championing many causes that eventually became law. Examples of this include the direct election of senators, the right to vote for women, and regulation of business and industry.

Through his powerful belief in Christian virtue, Bryan constantly championed the rights of the least among him. While his strict fundamentalist views eventually humiliated him at the end of his life by way of the "Scopes Monkey Trial," it was this belief in the decency of human life that drove him for so long. This book gives a brief and succinct discussion of the great politician's life.

William Jennings Bryan (1860-1925) has the dubious distinction of being one of only two men in American history to run for President three times and lose each time. Yet Bryan almost certainly qualifies as one of the most influential "losers" in American history, for despite his defeats he retained a large and loyal following that allowed him to remake the Democratic Party in the early twentieth century. The son of a country judge in Salem, Illinois, Bryan was raised in a solidly middle-class family by devoutly religious parents. Bryan attended law school in Chicago and then moved to Lincoln, Nebraska and opened his own law office. From the beginning his good looks, marvelous voice, and gifts as an orator made him into a celebrity in Nebraska. Bryan used these skills to side with the "underdogs" of the Midwestern prairies - the farmers who were being driven into bankruptcy and foreclosure by a worsening economy and a lack of support from the federal government in Washington. In 1890 he was elected to Congress - a rare victory for the Democrats in a Republican state. He soon earned a reputation as a superb speaker with a magnetic voice - and as a controversial foe of the big businesses which controlled both political parties. In the 1890's a nationwide economic depression gave Bryan the chance to seize control of the Democratic Party from its' conservative leaders. At the 1896 Democratic National Convention he gave what is still regarded as one of the greatest political speeches in American history - a ringing defense of farmers and an assault on the "robber barons" of New York's Wall Street. The "Cross of Gold" speech electrified the delegates and earned Bryan, at the age of 36, the presidential nomination. Over the next four months Bryan traveled by train to all parts of the nation, spoke to huge crowds, and basically ran the first modern "liberal" presidential campaign. He pushed for unemployment insurance, social security, government credit for farmers and small businessmen, an end to child labor in factories and coal mines, women's suffrage, and better working conditions for factory workers. Although we take many of these things for granted today, the Republicans and Big Business regarded them as dangerous and a threat to the national economy. They raised record sums of money to defeat Bryan, threatened factory workers with layoffs if they voted for Bryan, and in the end defeated the "Great Commoner" (so-called because of his affinity for the "common people" of America) by a narrow margin. Yet Bryan's heroic campaign allowed him to make the Democrats into the "liberal" party that they are today. In 1900 and 1908 he was again nominated for President by the Democrats - in 1900 he spoke out against American "imperialism" overseas and even uttered warnings that America could not be the world's policeman - a warning that we still argue about today. In 1912 Bryan played THE key role in securing the Democratic nomination for Woodrow Wilson - thus making Wilson President. Bryan served as Wilson's Secretary of State from 1913-1915, during that time he worked tirelessly to keep the USA out of World War One. When Wilson threatened to go to war with Germany in 1915 following the sinking of the British passenger ship Lusitania - a sinking which cost 128 American lives, Bryan resigned as Secretary rather than support a move towards war - a war which Bryan honestly felt would "waste" thousands of American lives. Over the last decade of his life Bryan became a leading spokesman for religious fundamentalism, and a strong opponent of the theory of evolution. In 1925 he made his last dramatic stand as the prosecutor in one of the most famous trials of the twentieth century. John T. Scopes, a biology teacher in the high school of Dayton, Tennessee, was arrested and put on trial for teaching the theory of evolution in violation of a state law forbidding it. The defense hired Clarence Darrow, the nation's most famous trial lawyer (the Johnnie Cochran of his day) and a militant critic of traditional Christian beliefs, to defend Scopes. When Bryan agreed to "battle for the Lord" and lead the prosection, the trial became a national sensation. The trial's climax came when Darrow put Bryan on the witness stand as an "expert" on the Bible and proceeded to ridicule his beliefs, such as that Jonah was swallowed by a great fish, or that Adam and Eve were really the first two humans on the Earth. Although Scopes was found guilty (he never paid the $100 fine), Bryan was so humiliated by Darrow's questioning and so exhausted by the trial that he suddenly died a few days later. Many big-city reporters and editors continued to ridicule Bryan even after his death - they regarded him as an ignorant rural hick with no redeeming qualities. Yet large numbers of people still turned out for his funeral - ordinary, "common" folk who realized how hard Bryan had fought on their behalf, and how much he had sacrificed in their cause. As this book points out, nearly all of the things Bryan fought for have since been enacted into laws, and most of the Democratic Party's great leaders of the past century - from Wilson to FDR to Huey Long to Harry Truman to Adlai Stevenson and Lyndon Johnson - owe Bryan a debt of gratitude for transforming the Democrats into a liberal party. As Truman noted "If it wasn't for Old Bill Bryan, there wouldn't be any liberalism at all in the country now". This biography, while short, is nonetheless an excellent introduction into one of the most influential - and controversial - politicians in American history.

The Democratic party William Jennings Bryan took control of in 1896 is a far cry from that same party today. The person most responsible for this change is Bryan. As the book points out Bryan was no intellectual giant; but how many of America's leaders have been? To quote Mr. Cherny, to Bryan "Expertise counted for less than a good heart and a principled outlook." The "Great Commoner" saw things in black and white, good vs. evil and when he had decided what was right he took up cause after cause with a zeal not often found among politicans.

It is often said that the proof is in the pudding, and the proof of Bryan's sweeping influence can be found during the New Deal as one after another his ideas were passed into law. He could of course be wrong as one of his pet projects prohibition and his unfortunate trip to Dayton show. On the other hand one has to wonder how much less the depression would have hurt the common people if more of Bryan's ideas had been made into law before 1929. Like him or not William Jennings Bryan has had more influence on American public policy than at least half of the men who won presidential elections.

As for this particular book. It is very well written and keeps the reader's interest. It is on the short side but provides a very good overview of Bryan's life and carear. The only reason I took away one star was because it is not well documented. No footnotes are to be found and in places they are badly needed. Otherwise this is a very good work dealing with one of America's greats.

I agree with the gentleman from Missouri that no writer yet has fully evoked Bryan. This particular book covers his life well but without digging heavily into psychology and I'm fine with that. The film "Inherit the Wind" made far too much of the fictionalized Bryan's endless talking and eating in some ham-headed attempt to conjure up an oral fixation or something. In the late Fifties to mid-Sixties every socially conscious filmmaker was a psychologist. Today, the same can be said about biographers.

The problem with Bryan, at least in terms of making him into something sensational, was that he was a paragon of virtues from an earlier time, a time when when, well, humility, modesty, temperance, focus, honesty, forgiveness, and a lot of other now-unfamilar and boring concepts were considered virtues. Oh, Bryan was ambitious, and he enjoyed being adored by crowds but it wasn't the ambition of Cheney or the craving for adoration of Clinton, at least not in any dreary sense we'd understand. Bryan made his impact by being Bryan, by speaking to people, by articulating their dreams, by often being an effective politician. He did that so well that up till fairly recently he still had mythic status, a great orator who was still spoken of with some reverance as late as the 1960's (I doubt nowadays 1 in 10,000 would even know the name).

I think ultimately historians have the same problem with Bryan as music biographers have with Franz Joseph Haydn--one of the greatest of all composers but a fairly normal and healthy man whose life lacked wild stories and titilating anecdotes. Personally, I find biographies of people like Haydn and Bryan enjoyable (this book at hand was very refreshing and I've found over the years that virtually everything from the University of Oklahoma Press usually is). It's nice reading about accomplished folks who are fairly normal. It's interesting that Bryan and Roosevelt, two of the giants of that era, both had steady and rewarding marriages with highly intelligent and accomplished women, both had families, both had lives and interests outside of politics. There's a rough definition of "healthy" lurking in there somewhere.

"A Righteous Cause" is a very solid study of the life of "The Great Commoner". Prof. Cherny presents a very fair and balanced view of his life and the events that he played a role in. I recommend this to anyone with a desire to know more about the extremely important figure from the turn of the 20th Century. Sadly there is not a good rendering on Bryan's life. Nothing that I've found lifts this obviously charismatic person off the page. I've found good brief bios in various books, but no master work yet.

William Jennings Bryan is a rather interesting and paradoxical figure in American political history. In this man one can observe an apparently sincere political fighter who supported many progressive issues vital to the rural and urban working classes of the day, a vanishing type of politician, then as now. Although he was the Democratic Party candidate for President in 1896 I do not believe that party would be his home today, nor would his progressive politics resonant with the substance of Democratic politics today. It is odd that over a century later Bryan's politics would far to the left of what passes for the Democratic center today. At the same time we see the limits that even a sincerely religious man can bring to political discourse. His Christian fundamentalism never let him really fight to the end for the program of agrarian relief and industrial reform that he articulated so well.

Mr. Cherny's mainly admiring biography does much to reintroduce the events surrounding this important figure who today, if remembered at all, is mainly known for being on the wrong side of evolution question in the Scopes trial. That is part of his late history and although that controversy has heated up again today Bryan is still on the wrong side of the evolution question. However, that issue does not define what he represented in American history. Rather, one must look at the populist, agrarian forces in revolt and the program Bryan tried to implement in his bid for power.

Bryan political career represented the last dying gasp of the agrarian revolt that flared up in the America Midwest and West in the last third of the 19th century. That such a revolt, left to its own devices, was doomed in the face of the rise of industrial production; the increased mechanization of agriculture and the dominance of finance capital do not make that revolt any less poignant. The question faced by Bryan and any other potential leader was the manner in which the revolt would be harnessed to win power and what allies would be sought to fight against the ravages of capitalist expansion.

Mr. Bryan took an essentially parliamentary, traditional road by trying to use the Democratic Party as a vehicle for social change. Many later politicians have also broken their teeth trying that same strategy for progressive social change. In 1896, and perhaps earlier, such a road was futile. In short, Mr. Bryan could have led an independent third party revolt, based on the already existing People's Party (which in his early career Bryan had been closely allied with) linked with the industrial working classes of the Northeast and Midwest.

This strategy was left to other forces that later formed of the Socialist party in 1901. Mr. Bryan's political trajectory, however, was not to join that fight but basically moved to the right culminating in support for the suppression of radicals in World War I. We have that seen that political phenomena before, as well. That said, this is an important book that details one type of parliamentary strategy still followed today by many progressives about the way to bring social change. That today it has produced meager returns does not lessen the interest it for this writer as applied in an earlier time. At that time it at least made some rational political sense.