The silver men “were looking for a Moses,” and William Jennings Bryan might be him. That was how the New York Evening Post’s Francis E. Leupp explained to two veteran political observers sitting next to him the story he was preparing to file that said Bryan was “looming up as a candidate.” The two men were dumbfounded. Like most people at the convention, they didn’t even know what Bryan looked like. Leupp had to point him out—the “youngish man with a smooth face, high forehead, and pronounced jaw . . . sucking on a lemon,” preparing to close for the silver side in the platform debate. “If Bryan gets before them while they’re in this condition, they’re gone,” he told them.1
As Senator Jones droned through the platform, provoking a reaction only when he said “The free and unlimited coinage of both silver and gold,” Bryan sensed “weakness at the pit of my stomach.” That sometimes happened before a big speech. Normally, he would lie down, but that was impossible. So he ventured to a concession stand for a sandwich and coffee. A Kansas City Star reporter whispered, “Who will be nominated?” Bryan told him, “Strictly confidential, not to be quoted for publication, I will be.” The reporter laughed.2
One of the most erratic and divisive men in Chicago, Senator Tillman, opened the defense of the silver plank. Short and round with one good eye fiercely gleaming and a sunken cavity where his left one should have been, he gave a violent and angry fifty-minute speech. “I come from the South—from the home of secession.” Hisses filled the room, and when they faded, Pitchfork Ben responded, “There are only three things in the world that hiss—a goose, a serpent, and a man.” Unrepentant, he said that in 1860 South Carolina “led the fight in the Democratic party which resulted in its disruption.” “That disruption of that party brought about the war. That war emancipated the black slaves. We are now leading a fight to emancipate the white slaves.” Tillman was comfortable forcing another “disruption” to end Northeastern dominance of the Democratic Party. The South and West were now united: the currency question had become “a sectional issue.” As he uttered these words, much of the hall hissed loudly. Cupping his hands to better scream his insults, Tillman assailed Cleveland as “undemocratic and tyrannical” and guilty of “usurpations of authority deserving of impeachment.” He closed by calling for Democrats to “unite the disjointed and contending or jealous elements in the ranks of the silver people.”3
Nothing in his speech made unity seem likely. Tillman, however, did set the stage for Bryan to make silver a national cause. The Atlanta Constitution’s editor Clark Howell, a Georgia delegate, scrawled a note to Bryan on an envelope. “You have now the opportunity of your life in concluding the argument for the majority report. Make a big, broad, patriotic speech that will leave no taste of sectionalism in the mouth and which will give a sentiment that will touch a responsive chord in the heart of the whole country. You can make the hit of your life.” Bryan scribbled back, “You will not be disappointed. . . . I will speak the sentiment of my heart.”4
Jones unexpectedly returned to the stage to disavow Tillman. “I am a Southern man,” he said. “I and those who feel as I do know that it is not sectional—it is confined neither to section, country, or clime—it is the cause of mankind.” For a few minutes, the hall was united, as even gold men cheered.5
Senator Hill offered the minority case, batting away Tillman’s insults, saying, “I am a Democrat: but I am not a revolutionist.” New York received “our Democracy from our fathers, and not from South Carolina.” Every delegate favored using gold and silver, he said. The question was “between international bimetallism and local bimetallism.” America could not attain bimetallism alone.6
Hill broadened his attack, asking why the income tax was now a test of “Democratic loyalty.” Why assail the Supreme Court? Why support term limits for judges when “our Democratic fathers” wrote lifetime tenure into the Constitution? The silver men howled abuse. “If we keep in the good old paths of the party, we can win. If we depart from them we shall lose the great contest which awaits us.” Reporters called it “the ablest and most logical speech” of Hill’s life and said, “If reason could have swayed the convention Mr. Hill would have compelled by his speech a merciless revision of the platform.” But it lacked an audience interested in compromise.7
Wisconsin senator William F. Vilas followed as sound money’s second advocate, with an incoherent speech that chewed up time, causing Governor Russell to fear that his remarks, the final minority address, would be cut short. Bryan heard Russell complain and suggested each side get ten minutes more. Hill agreed. “I cannot say that it was entirely unselfish on my side,” Bryan later admitted. “I needed it for the speech I was to make.” What seemed to have been a minor change Bryan later called an “unexpected bit of good fortune.” It was.8
As Russell appeared onstage, the clean-shaven former Massachusetts governor knew the fight was lost. “There is but one thing left to us,” he said, “and that is the voice of protest.” Great principles were being discarded and “new and radical leadership” was insisting on “a new and a radical policy.” Ahead was “the darkness of defeat and disaster” in the fall, which would bring renewal based on principles the minority advocated. Josephus Daniels later wrote that it was the “the great speech of the convention,” except for the one that followed. Russell would die a week later of heart failure while fishing in Canada. He was thirty-nine.9
Bryan was the final speaker on the platform debate and in a position to stampede the convention, but only because of an improbable chain of seven accidents. The first occurred on Monday when the DNC voted to provisionally seat the gold Nebraska men. That kept Bryan from being selected temporary chairman: he was not a delegate at the time of the election, and therefore he was ineligible. If he had been chosen, he wouldn’t have closed the currency debate.
The second was when other presidential candidates blocked him for the permanent chairmanship. They didn’t want him to have the exposure, no matter how unlikely a candidate he was. If he had been permanent chairman, he would not have been the platform’s floor manager.
Bryan had four more lucky breaks Wednesday. The convention asked him to speak, but he was in Credentials. Jones asked Bryan to be silver’s manager on the currency fight because the Nebraskan hadn’t yet spoken. Tillman insisted on opening the debate, leaving Bryan to close. And because the Resolutions report was held overnight, Bryan had time to prepare his pitch-perfect summary. The final accident that made possible Bryan’s success was Russell’s complaint that resulted in increasing Bryan’s time. It is hard to see how Bryan could have had the same impact if he had been forced to cut his remarks by a third.
If any of the seven breaks had played out another way, it is unlikely Bryan would have stepped on the stage to move a party with a thirty-minute speech that no one who heard it would ever forget.
The chair called for “Honorable William J. Bryan, of Nebraska.” The poet Edgar Lee Masters said Bryan “sprang” from his seat and moved vigorously toward the stage, taking stairs two at a time and striding quickly to the podium. As the crowd cheered and Nebraskans waved red bandanas, Bryan stood erect, wavy hair brushed back, left hand on the lectern, right hand up with palm open, jaw forward, head back, a tall, clean-shaven young man in a short black coat, trousers that bagged at the knees, low-cut vest, white shirt, and string tie. Frenzied delegates chanted “Bryan, Bryan, Bryan! What’s the matter with Bryan?” The chairman reminded him of the time limits; Bryan put his pocket watch on the podium. He had no notes, having memorized his speech or at least its outline.10
In a slow, conversational tone that caused his audience to lean forward and listen intently, Bryan began on a note of humility. “It would be presumptuous, indeed, to present myself against the distinguished gentlemen to whom you have listened if this were but a measuring of ability; but this is not a contest among persons.” Bryan argued Free Silver was more important than any person. “The individual is but an atom; he is born, he acts, he dies but principles are eternal.” He called the issue “the cause of humanity,” its outcome dependent on “a contest of principles” greater than any that voters had decided.11
Bryan’s voice was powerful, clear, and resonant. Daniels felt “the man on the farthest seat in the great auditorium could hear his every word” even though Bryan “did not seem to raise his voice at all.” Bryan spotted Governor Hogg to his left and Ollie James, a Kentucky delegate, on his right, both big men with clean-shaven, open faces, watching him intently and smiling. Focusing on them made him feel he was speaking to two friends. “My nervousness left me instantly,” Bryan wrote later.12
This battle, he explained, had been joined with his 1895 congressional Free Silver manifesto, followed by the formation of the Bimetallic DNC that sought “to take charge of and control the policy of the Democratic party.” This had been achieved “with a zeal approaching the zeal which inspired the crusaders.” This had been disruptive. “Old leaders had been cast aside” and “new leaders have sprung up to give direction to this cause of freedom.” “A question of principle” had sparked conflict. Silver had won. Bryan was not attempting to convert anyone: that contest was over.13
He dismissed fears of sound-money men that Free Silver “shall disturb your business interests,” saying their definition of a businessman was “too limited.” They should think more broadly. “The man who is employed for wages is as much a business man as is his employer. The attorney in a country town is as much a business man as the corporation counsel in a great metropolis. The merchant of the crossroads store is as much a business man as the merchant of New York. The farmer who goes forth in the morning and toils all day . . . is as much a business man as the man who goes upon the Board of Trade and bets upon the price of grain.” Each sentence brought shouts as Bryan milked it for applause. Rosser was in the gallery next to a skeptical farmer who had been leaving when Bryan took the stage but was caught by the Nebraskan’s words and stayed. After Bryan declared, “The miners who go a thousand feet into the earth . . . are as much business men as the few financial magnates who in a back room corner the money of the world,” the farmer threw his hat in the air, yelling, “My God! My God! My God!” as cheers rang through the hall and the galleries looked like a snowstorm because of the waving handkerchiefs. Someone screamed, “Go after them, Willie,” driving the Coliseum into a deeper frenzy.14
Free Silver was the cause of this broad class of working Americans, Bryan declared. These Western and Southern “hardy pioneers” were in no mood to bargain with Easterners in big cities, home to a money power that “scorned” and “disregarded” and “mocked” ordinary people. “We beg no longer, we entreat no more; we petition no more. We defy them!” All but the gold men stood and screamed their agreement. Then Bryan dismissed Vilas’s fears of revolution and defended the income tax by saying Free Silver men stood with Jackson “against the encroachments of aggregated wealth.” The income tax was not unconstitutional (“read the dissenting opinions,” he snapped), but “a just law.” He suggested Hill’s international bimetallic agreement would never be signed because other major powers “don’t want it at all,” causing laughter and cheers. After he opposed national banks issuing their own notes, he paused as if he were finished. Cries of “Go on! Go on!” rang out.15
Bryan did. Why was currency more important than protection? Because while “protection has slain its thousands the gold standard has slain its tens of thousands.” The Republicans picked “the man who used to boast he looked like Napoleon.” It was a cheap shot: admirers, not McKinley, came up with the “Napoleon of Protection,” but when Bryan said the Major “was nominated on the anniversary of the battle of Waterloo” and faced similar imminent defeat, the crowd hurled abuse at the GOP standard-bearer. Rather than attack McKinley more, Bryan said “no private character, however pure, no personal popularity, however great, can protect from the avenging wrath of an indignant people the man who will either declare that he is in favor of fastening the gold standard upon the people, or who is willing to surrender the right of self-government and place legislative power in the hands of foreign potentates and powers.” At that, men screamed at the top of their lungs, waving wildly whatever they could. It was so loud Bryan could not continue. He raised his hand and begged for quiet, saying, “I have only ten minutes left.” Had he not had those extra minutes, he might never have delivered his most effective lines.16
While Republicans say they believe “the gold standard is a good thing,” he said, “their platform pledges . . . to get rid of the gold standard, and substitute bimetallism” by international agreement, a contradiction he ridiculed. Bryan proclaimed this “a struggle between the holders of idle capital and the struggling masses who produce the wealth and pay the taxes.”17
Bryan argued, “There are two ideas of government.” Republicans believed “if you just legislate to make the well-to-do prosperous,” then “their prosperity will leak through on those below.” Democrats believed “if you legislate to make the masses prosperous their prosperity will find its way up and through every class that rests upon it.” He identified Free Silver with rural and small town America, saying the populated East favored gold, but “those great cities rest upon these broad and fertile prairies. Burn down your cities and leave our farms, and your cities will spring up again as if by magic. But destroy our farms and the grass will grow in the streets of every city in the country.” The farmers, stock raisers, small town lawyers, planters, and provincial shopkeepers of the West and South cheered, but this appeal to a rural America that was giving way to a great industrial power in bright, big cities would not help in the general election. Already, about a quarter of Americans lived in those cities Bryan just disparaged.18
“It is the issue of 1776 over again,” he said as he came to his close. America will not wait for permission from other nations to have Free Silver. “We shall restore bimetallism, and then let England have bimetallism because the United States have.” “If they”—the money power—“dare to come out and in the open defend the gold standard as a good thing, we shall fight to the uttermost.” It was time for the line he had used on the House floor and found so effective at the Crete Chautauqua. As he said, “You shall not press down upon the brow of labor this crown of thorns”—he moved his hands down the sides of his head, his fingers slowly drawing invisible spikes about his temples, blood dripping from the scratches. He then proclaimed, “You shall not crucify mankind on a cross of gold,” arms thrust out at right angles, chest forward, and head back, the crucified man personified. He held this pose for a few moments, then his arms fell to his sides, he stepped back, and his chin dropped. A second or so later, he straightened, turned, and walked off the stage, the hall in what the Atlanta Constitution called “fearful silence.”19
The Coliseum was quiet a moment more and then exploded. Men and women jumped on their chairs screaming, arms and fists striking at the air. Hats sailed skyward or were waved along with handkerchiefs, flags, canes, fans, umbrellas, newspapers, and coats, anything that could be grabbed and flourished. “I had never dreamed that a mortal man could so grip and fill with enthusiasm thousands of men,” Daniels later wrote. The floor and galleries were a mass of “frenzied throngs” of “shouters . . . besides themselves.”20
A Texas delegate—W. W. Gatewood—took his state’s standard and made his way to the Nebraska delegation, where he waved it frantically next to the Cornhusker State’s. Tennessee’s standard quickly joined them. Other delegates carried their standards toward Nebraska in solidarity. Altgeld forbade the removal of his state’s marker, but when Bland’s Missouri standard appeared next to Nebraska’s, he allowed the Prairie State’s to be grabbed from Hinrichsen and rushed toward the others. A roar went up. Soon all but the eleven gold states’ standards were massed around Nebraska’s, a clutch of purple sticks pumped wildly up and down. Altgeld “looked savage” as Illinois delegates took part in the Bryan demonstration.21
One journalist described the screaming in the Coliseum as louder than a “volley of siege cannons.” A dozen men—among them a twenty-one-year-old Georgian named James T. Hill, the convention’s youngest delegate—rushed the Nebraska delegation, hoisted Bryan on their shoulders, and paraded him through aisles jammed with frenzied delegates violently grasping at the young orator. His bearers eventually tired, leaving him to stand on a chair where everyone in the hall could see him. The standards formed a conga line behind South Carolina’s and wove their way round the floor as delegates and guests, frantic and wild, responded to what they had just heard. Two bands played different tunes, making it impossible to hear either. Men and women screamed, wept, and bellowed, with roar after maniacal roar crashing into the air until eventually, everyone was emotionally spent and order was restored with difficulty. When exhausted delegates and guests took their chairs, Saulsbury of Delaware stood on his and gave three cheers for Bryan, to which someone in the gallery yelled, “What’s the matter with Bryan for president?”22
Clarence Darrow, later Bryan’s adversary at the Scopes Trial in 1925, had never seen an audience so moved. “Mr. Bryan told the Democratic convention what he believed,” the Chicago lawyer later wrote. “They listened with desires and hopes, and genuinely with absolute confidence and trust. Here was a political Messiah who was to lift the burdens that the oppressed had borne so long.” Even Altgeld was impressed, admitting, “That is the greatest speech I have ever listened to.” Then he asked Darrow, “What did he say, anyhow?”23
Bryan later recalled Daniel Webster’s maxim that the “essentials for a successful speech are eloquence, the subject, and the occasion.” Bryan felt he had the last two: Free Silver was an issue of “transcendent importance” and the moment the climax of “a revolt in the Democratic Party—a fight won by the rank and file against all the power of the Administration, and of the power of the big corporations and the metropolitan press.” Modesty kept him from crediting his own eloquence, yet his success was the result of skill, practice, and a keen sense for what his audience wanted to hear, as well as seven lucky accidents.24
This speech aimed to rally the silver base, not to persuade (“We beg no longer, we entreat no more; we petition no more. We defy them!”). Bryan was speaking to true believers. He treated political opponents as enemies (“In this campaign there is not a spot of ground upon which the enemy will dare to challenge battle”); deployed the language of civil war (“In this contest brother has been arrayed against brother”); used military metaphors (“We are fighting in the defense of our homes”); compared silver Democrats to Christian crusaders (They “began the conflict with a zeal approaching the zeal which inspired the crusaders who followed Peter the Hermit”); and pitted class against class (“Upon the side of the idle holders of idle capital, or upon the side of the struggling masses?”). From the start, he was defiant. It was masterful, memorable, and effective.25
Other campaigns knew Bryan had upended their calculations. “Boys, we are lost,” said a Missouri delegate. “It looks that way,” replied Senator George G. Vest, who was to nominate Bland. Defections began. Georgia, which Bland had counted on, caucused after adjournment and decided to go for Bryan. Alabama appeared moving toward Bryan, and Bland’s managers in Lebanon, Missouri, received wires that they were bleeding support elsewhere. A reporter was probably correct: “Had the vote been taken immediately at the conclusion of his speech,” Bryan “would have been undoubtedly nominated by acclamation.”26
Delegates approached Bryan and Nebraska allies to pledge their support or ask questions that worried them. One asked, “Did he drink to excess?” and was relieved to learn he abstained. Had Bryan declared he would not support a gold candidate? Yes, he had, an answer that pleased the questioner. Later, as Bryan left the Coliseum, someone gave him a rabbit foot, saying “Keep it, Mr. Bryan. It will bring you good luck.”27
The votes on the platform and its rejection of Cleveland went fast. Gold took all the votes of 11 states and most in 4 others. Silver took all the votes in 33 states and territories and most in 3 more. It was the first convention vote since Michigan had been stolen: silver men now had more than two-thirds of the delegates, giving them control over the nomination if they could unite on a candidate.28
When delegates returned that evening, the arc lights made the hall stifling hot. There was a crush at the entrances. It was tough to create the semblance of order, despite the police detail being doubled. The galleries were disorderly and gold men appeared to be overrepresented. Every chair was taken and hundreds clamored outside for tickets.29
The roll call for presidential nominations began. Arkansas yielded to Missouri to place Bland in nomination. Senator Vest stressed Bland’s decades as “the living, breathing embodiment of the silver cause,” but he could not be “heard ten feet away” because of his weak voice and the unruly crowd. Delegates chanted “Bryan, Bryan, W. J. Bryan.” Vest’s remarks fell flat until he closed by rhyming that “Give us Silver Dick / and silver quick / And we will make McKinley sick / In the ides of next November.”30
Hal T. Lewis, a lawyer and soon-to-be Georgia supreme court justice, took the stage when Georgia was called. He had only five minutes to prepare, but he was ready. “I did not intend to make a speech,” he said, but simply nominate “a distinguished citizen, whose very name is an earnest of success.” He has stood “among the leaders of the Democratic hosts like Saul among the Israelites, head and shoulders above the rest.” This man “needs no speech to introduce him . . . no encomium to commend him,” the young lawyer said. “I refer, fellow citizens, to William J. Bryan, of Nebraska.” “Like a geyser,” a New York Times reporter observed, “the enthusiasm spouted boiling hot” in a huge demonstration, almost the equal of the one following Bryan’s speech that morning. The Nebraskan’s supporters screamed, cheered, paraded, and waved anything they could as two bands played simultaneously. Someone let loose with blasts from a foghorn they’d smuggled into the hall. Lewis waited ten minutes but with no sign of the spectacle abating, he left the stage. No more words were needed. The hall was awash with Bryan’s name as delegates and guests shouted, cheered, and applauded. Bryan, however, was not in the hall. He was lying on his bed at the Clifton, exhausted from the past days’ exertions and his morning speech.31
Senator Turpie then nominated Indiana governor Claude Matthews, in the evening’s longest speech. The near octogenarian, shaking from age, barely glanced up from his text when he read. As he droned on, a joker yelled, “I nominate Cleveland!,” causing three cheers for the president. Iowa was next and former representative Frederick White took the podium, emphasizing Horace Boies’s record as governor and trying to make a virtue of the Iowan’s lack of pizzazz. “There would be “no rockets sent up . . . no sensational performances” with Uncle Horace as president. The lengthy, dry, and defensive address led to a perfunctory demonstration that was sputtering out until a piercing scream came from the gallery.32
Dressed in white from hat to shoes, twenty-two-year-old Minnie Murray, publisher of the Nashua, Iowa, Free Silver Reporter and a Boies supporter, was “swaying, jumping, clapping her hands” and standing on a chair and shrieking “Boies! Boies! Boies!” Her antics soon attracted the hall’s attention. Someone thrust a small flag into her hands. She swung it vigorously until the shaft broke. The yells increased. A larger flag was handed to her. An Iowa delegate carrying a giant Boies banner made his way from the floor to her side, jumping over press tables and the rail dividing the floor from the gallery and pushing against people jammed in the aisles. His approach led the woman in white to more frantic exertions. When the Boies flag reached her, she waved it but it was too heavy. The flag bearer convinced her and her fiancé to go to the convention floor, where she ran around, cheered by the crowd, until she dropped from exhaustion. The “Lady in White” was the evening’s sensation, not her candidate.33
Bryan fell asleep just before 11 p.m. There was a stack of telegrams when he awoke half an hour later, leading him to remark, “Well, I see they are still at it. They are certainly the most remarkable set of people.”34
All that was left were favorite sons and a gold standard-bearer. Kentucky nominated its U.S. senator Joseph C. S. Blackburn. Ohio offered publisher John McLean, whose attraction was his personal wealth that could pay for the campaign.35
Alienated, gold Democrats did not offer a candidate. Massachusetts wanted to name Russell, but he declined “because of the platform.” New Jersey “does not desire to nominate any man upon the platform of this Convention.” New York had no candidate. Neither did Pennsylvania, but it would have something to say when it came time to voting. The convention adjourned after midnight. It would be a short night for delegates.36
Bland had spent the day at his farm, overseeing the painting of a side porch and ruminating with a reporter over a wild rabbit infestation. He summoned a doctor, saying he was “feeling very nervous and wanted something to ‘brace him up.’ ” Dr. McCombs asked, “Do you think you will be nominated?” Bland laconically answered, “Yes, I am sure of it. I do not want it but it seems to be coming my way.”37
Hogg and Jones pressured Bryan to let the balloting start that night. Bryan demurred, saying, “If the people want me nominated and that feeling could not endure overnight, it would perish before the campaign was a week old.” He told reporters “the convention is in the control of sincere friends of free silver and I am willing to trust their judgment whether they vote now or next week.”38
RISING TEMPERATURES REPLACED COOL breezes overnight. Delegates and guests, “tired and weary” from their late Thursday night, cooled themselves with fans, waving them more frantically as the Coliseum grew hotter. The hall was also more crowded as scalpers had been selling an “unlimited supply” of passes.39
Senator White gaveled the convention to order at 11 a.m., introduced the invocator, accepted the nominations of former governors Robert E. Pattison of Pennsylvania and Sylvester Pennoyer of Oregon, and ordered the first ballot. It took five, but it was still over in a relatively short time.40
With 620 needed for the nomination, Bland led on the first ballot but with only 235 votes. Bryan followed at 137. The news was telegraphed to Lincoln, Nebraska. A crowd had gathered around the Democratic headquarters before 10 a.m., jamming the storefront and spilling onto the streets. Someone lit a match in the office, not knowing there was a gas leak. The blast shattered windows, knocked people down, and singed one man, but didn’t discourage Bryan’s neighbors from clamoring for the latest news.41
Many gold men were abstaining. Whitney sat in the New York delegation, looking at the ceiling and fanning himself vigorously as former governor Flower announced “in view of the platform adopted by this convention and of its actions and proceedings . . . we decline to further participate.” Silver men chanted, “Put ’em out!” When Bryan gained more than Bland did on the second ballot and closed the gap, Whitney told reporters, “I am going home.”42
Silver Dick ran out of steam on the third ballot and the fourth ballot sealed his fate. Surrounded by angry, agitated delegates pointing and gesticulating, Alabama’s chairman paused ten seconds—an eternity in this setting—before announcing his state was moving from Bland to Bryan. Pandemonium broke out. A new banner popped up: BRYAN, BRYAN: NO CROWN OF THORNS, NO CROSS OF GOLD. After the chairman refused their request for time to consult, Illinois delegates had voted for Bland before leaving the hall to confer while the fourth ballot was being tabulated. Hinrichsen and others were pushing hard for a switch to Bryan. The conference was acrimonious.43
When the clerks finished their tally, Bryan had moved into first place while Bland’s total dropped. A huge demonstration erupted when delegates figured out Bryan was the front-runner. “The hall was a howling mob,” wrote a Chicago Tribune reporter, “and not a living soul could hear a word.” Virginia’s Carter Glass wrestled with another Bryan man for the state’s standard, before realizing they backed the same man. Governor Hogg got in a fistfight with Representative George B. McClellan Jr. over New York’s standard. Bryan supporters were soon parading standards from twenty-five states around the floor.
Bryan quietly told reporters the contest was over. An Illinois delegate emerged from the conference room, grabbed the state emblem, and joined the Bryan conga parade on the floor. Bryan men cheered, believing it signaled Illinois was theirs. By now Bland knew his numbers were falling. When a front-runner drops, it’s impossible to resume upward movement.44
Before moving to the next ballot, White announced he was “about to enforce” that “two-thirds of the vote given” will nominate the candidate for president. That meant if 160 gold men abstained, then 512 votes were needed for the nomination. Illinois, Ohio, and West Virginia all passed on the fifth ballot, leaving Bryan a hundred votes short. The secretary returned to states that had passed and called for Illinois. Waving his gray hat over his head, Hinrichsen said, “Illinois’s 48-votes for William J. Bryan” as Altgeld sat glowering. That broke the dam. McLean stood on his chair and frantically waved his hickory cane. Recognized by White, he cast Ohio’s 46 votes for Bryan. The Nebraskan was now at 497, just shy of a two-thirds majority.45
Governor Stone signaled White. Knowing what was coming, delegates and guests were “in an uproar” as the Missourian appeared onstage. The hall quieted as everyone strained to hear Stone read a letter Bland had given him days earlier and had just telegraphed Stone to deliver. If his candidacy would obstruct the nomination of a free coinage man then “I wish my name at once unconditionally withdrawn from further consideration,” Bland had written. “The cause must be put above the man.”46
The hall was drenched in noise as excited delegates and guests screamed, stamped their feet, and waved anything they could while the band played “Dixie.” As delegates yelled “Let Georgia lead!” the Peach Tree standard led a parade of other guidons around the hall as bands played “Marching Through Georgia” and “15,000 men, all on their feet, cheered and waved and kicked like howling dervishes.”47
Bryan received the news in his Clifton Hotel room and then went to the barbershop for a shave. A reporter found him tilted back in the chair, face covered in lather. Once he’d been shaved, Bryan shook the reporter’s hand and said, “In order that I may have no ambition but to discharge faithfully the duties of the office, I desire to announce that if elected I shall under no circumstances be a candidate for re-election.” When he returned to his suite, he pulled from his pocket the good-luck charm he had been given the day before and told reporters, “That’s what comes from having a rabbit’s foot.”48