To win the White House, the Democrats had to draw in Silver men from other parties, including the Republicans and Populists. Creating a unified white metal front would bust up the existing party system and vastly improve Bryan’s chances for victory in November.
But the young Nebraskan’s task was to be made difficult by three revolts. The first was among Democratic newspaper publishers. This emboldened Democratic gold men to revolt by backing McKinley, running a gold Democratic ticket, or staying home. The final revolt was among Populist allies willing to make him their presidential candidate, but on their terms. Handling all this wasn’t going to be easy.
NOW THAT BRYAN WAS their candidate, Democrats faced two critical decisions—picking his running mate and winning the Populist Party’s endorsement. To kick-start discussions on vice presidential possibilities, Senator Jones summoned a silver leader from each state. Bland was their favorite, but he did not want to be considered, nor did Boies. Senator Blackburn pushed for McLean, whose fortune could underwrite the campaign. He was surprised when the Buckeye State’s Bimetallic DNC committeeman, Allen W. Thurman, declared his fellow Ohioan unreliable. Someone mentioned Arthur Sewall, a millionaire Maine shipbuilder with a ruddy face, thick gray mustache, thinning gray hair, and deep-set eyes. He owned banks and railroads and was reliably Free Silver, unusual for a businessman. An Easterner would help make Free Silver a national, not sectional, issue and his wealth could “supply the deficiency” in funding the campaign.
Bryan listened, saying little. Finally, Jones asked Bryan if as “the chosen leader,” he had a preference. Rather than offer a name, Bryan dropped a bomb. He would decline the nomination if saddled with McLean. Calling him “an immoral man,” Bryan said he would not sell “the party’s birthright for his campaign money.” The threat was received in silence. Bryan later observed it would be useful to have an Eastern running mate. Bryan participated in, but did not lead, the discussions about his vice president. The new presidential candidate would have to be stronger to bend the campaign to his desires.1
Senator White banged his gavel at 11 a.m. the next day. Half the Coliseum’s 15,000 seats were empty and more than 250 delegates had departed, mostly gold men. Ten vice presidential nominations were offered. Only four mattered—Bland, McLean, former representative Joseph C. Sibley of Pennsylvania, and Sewall, whom Bryan now quietly supported. The rest were favorite sons or vanity nominations. Delegates swung wildly around for four ballots, with Sewall dropping to a handful of votes on the third ballot before the convention named him unanimously on the fifth.2
Sewall received word while boarding a train at the Sixty-Third Street Station for his hotel. After the third ballot, he thought he had lost. Dazed, he said the nomination was “wholly unexpected.” While he had not met his running mate before the convention, Sewall thought Bryan “a very fine man.” Astonished at the news, Sewall’s neighbors in Bath, Maine, rang church bells, set tar barrels on fire, shot off cannons, and paraded around town led by a drum corps whose tunes were drowned out by fireworks and tin horns.3
THAT DAY, SENATOR JONES was elected DNC chairman, but only after Tillman demanded to know if he was “the choice of some secret caucus.” There was a caucus of one—Bryan wanted the Arkansas senator to run his campaign. At Bryan’s suggestion, the DNC voted to hold a notification rally in Madison Square Garden on July 21. Chicago was discussed as the headquarters and while the DNC didn’t vote, the idea was well received. Jones disagreed, wanting Washington for the headquarters and a later date for the notification rally. He would eventually get the second, but not the first.4
Bryan spent two days arguing with the Notification Committee on when he would be formally notified in New York. The committee wanted more time to build a crowd. Rumors were the Madison Square Garden might slide into August, suggesting indecision when the party needed to be surging.
Bryan and Mary left Chicago at 2 p.m. on the Illinois Central. Declining the offer of a private car and special train, they took seats in an ordinary Pullman, headed for his birthplace of Salem, in southern Illinois. They had planned to stay a week, but as the nominee, it would now be three nights before he returned to Lincoln.5
This trip to his childhood home was poignant for Bryan. A few days earlier, few Americans had ever heard of him. Now he was the Democratic presidential nominee, greeted by crowds at every stop. He was overcome with emotion when he arrived in Salem, where he had been two weeks earlier to bury his mother. Standing on his sister’s porch, he said, “There is no spot that can ever become so dear to a man as the spot about which clusters sacred memories of early childhood.” He shook hands until the long line of neighbors dwindled away.6
After resting three days, Bryan was in a good mood, making jokes as he and his family made their way home to Lincoln. At East St. Louis, Illinois, hundreds of railroad workers demanded he speak. “I can understand your curiosity to see a Presidential candidate,” he said. “I’ve been there myself,” he added, drawing laughter. At another stop, he asked the crowd if they were going to vote. In response to their cheers, he exclaimed, “All doubt has passed away!” When at a later stop, hundreds crowded close to his car, hoping to shake his hand, Bryan shouted, “Everyone throw up your hands,” as he held his in the air. When they followed suit, he said, “Now then shake,” and wiggled his hands as the crowd laughed and the train pulled out of the station.7
As Bryan grew more confident, his rhetoric gained an edge. He told a crowd in Sedalia, Missouri, that “Parties are but the instruments by which we carry out those policies which we believe in.” Later, to thousands waiting at the St. Joseph, Missouri, depot, Bryan defended “agitation” as “the only means” to change “the vicious system of finance” that “allowed a few to gain an unjust advantage over the many.”8
BRYAN WAS RECEIVED AS a hero on his journey home, but many Democratic newspapers now openly revolted against him and his platform. Their owners and editors tended to be gold Democrats and businessmen, which didn’t dispose them to be enthusiastic about Bryan, and many saw his Free Silver platform as heresy. Because of past experiences with inflationary currencies in Europe, German Democratic editors were particularly antagonistic to silver. Even before Bryan was selected, the Chicago Staat-Zeitung, the Midwest’s leading German paper, declared German-Americans “have no sympathy with such a platform” of “repudiation of the rankest kind” and “revolutionary,” written by an “abominable gang.”9
More Democratic newspapers bolted after Bryan’s nomination. A New York Times editorial, reflecting dozens of other papers, condemned “the stealing of the representation of Michigan” and called the platform “a declaration in favor of anarchy and communism.” The Sun assailed “populism’s destructive flame” and condemned Free Silver as a “national dishonor and a monumental anachronism.” “From now until the night of election day,” the paper editorialized, “the Presidential candidate of every Democrat who favors honest money and who still hopes to crush the enemies of the fundamental principles he was bred in, should be, without hesitation, evasion, or sop to prejudice, William McKinley.”10
The Atlanta Constitution was a rare defender, dismissing the Democratic newspapers’ revolt as “considerable sputtering.” But two days after the convention, 56 Democratic papers had bolted, either for McKinley or an honest-money Democratic ticket, and two days after that, at least 31 more joined them. The number continued growing for the rest of the campaign. Many Democrats picked up their usual paper to find articles criticizing the Democratic candidate and advocating McKinley or a sound-money Democratic ticket. There was little Bryan could do, but it would hurt in critical battleground states.11
SOUND-MONEY DEMOCRATS WERE ALSO bolting the Democratic Party, with some endorsing McKinley. These Democrats believed the Chicago platform was a radical break with their party’s orthodoxy, especially on currency. Many were administration supporters while others were businessmen for whom business came first, party loyalty second. While they disagreed with McKinley’s protectionism, these Democrats thought tariff policy was a much smaller concern than whether the country’s money was debased, its credit and commerce and economy all ruined. McKinley was trustworthy on the money question and with the narrow GOP Senate majority dependent upon Western Republicans who would not support protection without free coinage, they thought the Major wouldn’t be able to enact high tariffs.
Some gold Democrats preferred to oppose the Chicago ticket and platform without explaining what they would do, finding it hard to endorse a Republican for president. Their reason for objecting to Bryan was the currency plank. It was “contrary to all my belief,” said Delaware’s senator George Gray. “Convictions cannot be compromised.” Some gold Democrats would vote for McKinley and then their local Democratic ticket, but wondered if there should be a sound-money Democratic ticket to turn out gold Democrats to save like-minded Democrats in Congress and help retake control of the party after its inevitable defeat.12
The White House signaled its support for the idea with an administration official “known to enjoy the President’s confidence” blessing the creation of a gold Democratic ticket. Whitney added his support in mid-July by repudiating the Chicago ticket and platform. Sound-money Democrats began holding meetings to name delegates to a national gold Democratic convention.13
BRYAN HAD NOT ANTICIPATED a competing gold Democratic Party, but this did not divert his attention from achieving his long-standing goal of winning the endorsement of the country’s existing third party, the People’s Party, or Populists as they were commonly called. Founded in 1890 as an expression of agrarian discontent, Populists were strong in many Midwest states.
There were a million reasons why Bryan wanted the Populist Party convention endorsement when it met in St. Louis on July 22. Actually, 1,041,028 reasons. That was how many votes the People’s Party presidential nominee, General James B. Weaver, received in 1892. Bryan felt those Populist votes were essential to his election. If Populists supported him—particularly in the Midwest—then the country’s center paired with a Solid South and the silver West would crush the Northeast.
However, a Populist endorsement had downsides. The party had taken radical stands and its leaders were often outcasts, extremist in their views, rhetoric, and actions. Under no circumstances could Bryan run on the Populist platform. That would be lethal. He had to stand on the planks of Democrats’ Chicago platform, which was thought to be radical enough.
Populists had scheduled their convention after the major parties’ gatherings, believing both would reject silver. Now they were faced with endorsing Bryan or going their own way. To win the nomination, Bryan had allies among the People’s Party fusionists who wanted to bring silver Democrats and Republicans into an alliance with their party. Fusionists like Herman E. Taubeneck, the party’s chairman, were numerous among West and Plains state Populists, who had disproportionately more convention delegates because of party rules.
Their opponents in the party were the middle-of-the-road men, mostly Southerners who feared that nominating Bryan would kill the Populist Party. “I appeal to you in the name of good and suffering humanity,” one middle-of-the-roader said, “not to allow the Democratic serpent to swallow me up.” Texans were among the more radical of the mid-roaders, led by James H. “Cyclone” Davis, a spellbinding forty-two-year-old publisher and lawyer.14
After Chicago, Bryan received a “talisman of great potency” from Montana telegraph operators—another rabbit’s foot. Not just any rabbit’s foot, but one “killed at midnight, in a grave yard with the moon over the slayer’s left shoulder.” “May your voice never grow weak nor your zeal the less in sounding the slogan of 16 to 1, and may the fight be taken into the enemy’s country,” the men wrote. “When the battle rages hottest, don’t forget the rabbit foot.” Bryan would need the extra luck in St. Louis.15
POPULIST DELEGATES BEGAN ARRIVING the weekend before the convention, a ragtag group of true believers, cranks, radicals, and eccentrics. They did not embrace parliamentary procedure, decorum, or tradition. Unlike the major parties, Populists did not have private train cars, luxury hotel suites, fine booze, or bands in tailored uniforms. People’s Party members were often poor and as low on patience as they were on cash. It was chaos from the moment they started checking into boardinghouses and cheap hotels.
The middle-of-the-roaders had demands. They would endorse Bryan if he dropped Sewall and let the Populists name his running mate. Three presidents had died or been killed in office, “by which the government has passed into the hands of vice presidents,” one hard-liner said. If that happened to Bryan, America “will have a national banker for president.” Bryan must also endorse the Populist platform or the mid-road men would fight him on the convention floor.16
Bryan’s representatives—Senator Jones, Governor Stone, and John W. Tomlinson, a close friend of Bryan’s and the Bimetallic DNC committeeman from Alabama—were given the demands Monday morning when the party’s Executive Committee met. Backed by General Weaver, the Populist standard-bearer in 1892 and chairman of Bryan’s endorsement effort, the Bimetallic Democrats rejected the ultimatum. It was the Populists’ “patriotic duty to accept the Democratic ticket.” The Chicago platform had adopted “many of the Populist principles and nominated candidates so friendly to those principles.”17
It was hard to decipher whether the fusionists or the mid-road radicals had the upper hand in the convention. A test vote was expected Wednesday on a temporary chairman, but only North Carolina senator Marion Butler ran. He was a mild fusionist. The mid-road crowd then won a vote on a credentials dispute Thursday, but the Bryan men followed that night by electing Nebraska senator William V. Allen permanent chairman by a wider margin, leading the fusionists to believe they were in charge.18
ANY ILLUSION THAT THE Bryan men controlled the convention was shattered Friday when the mid-road men moved to change the Rules Committee report to make the vice presidential nomination before the president’s. A mid-road man urged fusionists to support the minority report, then nominate a mid-road vice presidential candidate and “we will be in a position to treat with you.” After a wild debate featuring speeches by Cyclone Davis and “Sockless” Jerry Simpson, a former Kansas congressman and fusionist, the minority report passed, 785 to 616.19
Jones wired Bryan in Lincoln. Would he accept the nomination if the Populists picked someone other than Sewall? Bryan immediately replied he would not accept the endorsement unless Sewall was chosen. Jones showed Bryan’s wire around but no one seemed to care.20
When the convention met Friday night, the floor was a heaving, restless mass. Tensions were high as the Bryan men tried to salvage Sewall and the mid-roaders prepared to saddle the Democratic contender with a Populist true believer. Sewall and five other Populists were nominated for vice president. The leading Populist was Tom Watson, a thin, severe, forty-year-old, rough-talking lawyer and editor from Thomson, Georgia, a small town southeast of Atlanta. He grew up poor during the Civil War and saw his family lose their small plantation during Reconstruction. An agrarian who opposed industrialization, he was a hater, especially of Southern Democrats. He was seconded by a Georgia delegate who, in response to a shouted question if Watson would stand by the platform, yelled back, “Yes, sir, until hell freezes over, sir.”21
Sewall was lashed continually in speeches that ended near midnight. The balloting took thirty minutes. Cyclone’s 103 Texans put Watson over the top. While states were changing their votes to make it unanimous, the lights went out. They came back on at sixteen minutes before 1 a.m. As Watson was declared the nominee, delegates screamed, “Sixteen to one! Sixteen to one!”22
Stone and Jones told reporters they could not see how Bryan could accept the People’s Party nomination after Sewall had been rejected. The two men met with Populist allies at 2:45 a.m. and wired Bryan afterward, asking him to reconsider his decision to refuse the Populist nomination. His emissaries heard nothing more from him until the convention was over.23
The exchange of telegrams between Jones and Bryan where he said he would not accept the Populist endorsement without Sewall appeared in the Saturday morning papers, but Bryan’s threat didn’t seem to matter. Sockless Simpson dismissed Watson’s nomination as a problem, saying, “We will nominate Bryan anyhow. There is more than one way to whip the devil around the stump.”24
Presidential nominations were opened. General Weaver offered Bryan by saying Populism had converted the Democratic Party and delegates would violate sacred principles if they failed to endorse Bryan. The young Nebraskan—“a gallant champion”—was “leading a revolt against the plutocracy,” and “if we allow the present happy juncture to pass, all the heroic work of twenty years will be thrown to the winds.”25
Delegates cheered, waving anything they could, including umbrellas, hats, and papers. A giant yellow wooden cross, topped by a paper crown bearing Bryan’s closing words from Chicago, was paraded into the hall. But among the enthusiasts, there were islands of silent, brooding mid-roaders in the Missouri, Rhode Island, Texas, and Wisconsin delegations. When Bryan supporters tried grabbing the Lone Star State’s standard, a dozen Texans reached for their guns before thinking better of drilling their fellow Populists.26
Virginia’s James G. Field, Weaver’s running mate, rose to second Bryan, then moved to suspend the rules and nominate Bryan unanimously. With his the only name before the convention, this would keep mid-roaders from nominating anyone. Allen, the permanent chairman, called for a voice vote and declared the motion carried. All hell broke loose. Texas hard-liners rushed the stage, kept at bay by a cordon of fusionists. Fights started on the floor before Allen said states could vote for Bryan or anyone else. This only escalated the protests. Field pulled the convention from the brink by withdrawing his motion. Allen ruled other nominations were in order. S. F. Norton, a Chicago greenback publisher and socialist favorite of the middle-of-the-road faction, was nominated, seconded by Cyclone. It was clear to all that the middle-of-the-road men lacked a serious figure to contest Bryan.27
Fusionists began spreading the rumor that Democrats would withdraw Sewall if Bryan received the Populist nomination. It was a lie. Late in the roll call, Governor Stone and Rocky Mountain News publisher Thomas M. Patterson appeared on the platform. They had seen Bryan’s telegram and, concerned about personal honor, wanted Allen to admit the exchange from the podium. Allen refused to allow Stone and Patterson to speak and told them Bryan had sent nothing to him. Harrison Sterling “Stump” Ashby of Texas rose to ask about Bryan’s wire. As clerks finished checking their numbers, Allen lied, denying its existence, and then announced Bryan had 1,047 votes to Norton’s 331.28
Delegates broke loose with wild cheers and marching. The giant cross was again paraded, state standards brought together and used to menace the guidons of mid-road delegations. A large portrait of Bryan was hung off a gallery railing, immediately drawing the standards and giant cross, which were waved back and forth underneath the picture as the crowd cheered. Middle-of-the-road men from Texas massed on the hall’s left side. When the demonstration petered out, the radicals let loose yells of defiance and pushed against the fusionists, looking for fights. As the convention ended, Bryan had the Populist nomination, but his Democratic running mate, Sewall, did not.29
That night, the party’s national committee replaced Taubeneck as chairman with Senator Butler. Josephus Daniels, who attended the Populist convention at Jones’s request, distrusted his fellow North Carolinian, who was not a popular choice among both hard-liners and fusionists. One Populist editor complained, “Butler is a trimmer and a trickster.”30
Butler’s plan was for Democrats and Populists to divide electors in states where the People’s Party was strong. In the South, where the Democratic vote was larger, Populists would receive a minority of electors. In the Midwest and West, where the Populist vote was larger, Democrats would receive the minority. Both party’s electors would support Bryan, but Populists would run their own vice president. If neither party’s VP won a majority, then the Senate would decide, with a coalition of Democrats, Populists, and silver Republicans selecting the man.31
In Maine, Sewall said the Populist convention’s action “does not change my attitude or plans the least particle.” He would not withdraw. In Lincoln, Bryan dug in, ordering a BRYAN AND SEWALL banner hung over his headquarters. In Georgia, Watson told reporters Bryan should embrace the People’s Party agenda, which “goes further” than the Chicago platform. He framed the election as a sectional contest: “the north and east” had been built “at the expense of the south and west.” He commended Bryan’s “unblemished character and brilliant ability” and claimed they “were personal friends” when they served in the House together. But in Congress, Watson had mocked Bryan as “the ‘darling’ of the Democratic side of the House, the prettiest man in all the bunch” and said Bryan reminded him of “an old fish trap, with one mouth down stream and the other up. It catches ’em a-comin’ and a-gwine.”32
Watson soon vowed he would stay in the race. Sewall should put “the success of the cause . . . above personal interests or aspirations” and withdraw. Sewall wrote privately to Bryan, telling him that what mattered was “the success of the head of our ticket” and that he would step aside if Bryan wanted, a selfless gesture that endeared the Maine businessman to Bryan.33
Watson again demanded that Democrats retire “the millionaire candidate from the East” and accept “the Populist nominee of the South” as Bryan’s running mate, but backed by Bryan, Sewall told reporters, “Any man who for a moment entertains such an idea is not worthy of an answer.”34
Watson’s nomination raised the question of whether Bryan should formally accept the Populist nomination. Senator Jones urged Bryan to be cautious and low-key. Bryan told reporters he was certain “a solution of all difficulties will be found in due time.” For now, he planned to muddle through.35
That might work. Some Populists thought their party and Bryan were better off not formally notifying him, so he would not have to accept or reject its nomination. The notification chairman, Senator Allen, had pushed this idea in St. Louis. One of his committee members had told reporters there would be no official notice because Bryan already knew he was nominated.36
By remaining on the People’s Party ticket, Watson complicated Bryan’s plans to capture the million Populist votes. To put those votes in his column, each state’s Democratic party would have to get their state’s Populists to agree to endorse Bryan-Sewall in return for Democrats backing Populist candidates for state office or electors.
These negotiations to “fuse” the two parties’ tickets began. Both sides were stubborn: Nebraska mid-road men stalled until Democrats threatened to end negotiations, and Kansas Democrats refused to split electors if Populists insisted on Watson. In both instances, agreements were finally reached, but other negotiations would take months, and much effort, to resolve.37
BRYAN’S MANAGERS HOPED HIS Madison Square Garden acceptance would show that Free Silver was breaking through in the East, but his journey to New York began on a sour note. Boarding a train on Friday, August 7, he told well-wishers in Lincoln that he would accept the nomination “in the heart of what seems to be the enemy’s country, but which we hope to be our country before this campaign is over.” Easterners believed this showed Bryan’s animosity toward them. His defenders believed it was taken out of context. It’s true that more attention was paid to his first phrase—“the enemy’s country”—than the second—his “hope” to make it “our country” during the election, but this would have profound implications.38
Bryan delivered thirty-eight speeches in five days en route to New York, draining energy and wearing him down. There were tens of thousands of people at his overnight stops, but even in small towns, hundreds or thousands would turn out, expecting a show.39
He went on the offense, attacking the gold standard, the money power, and monopoly. In Chicago, he lashed the city’s papers and described his opponents as “the great trusts and combinations.” In Pittsburgh, Bryan again referred to “the enemy’s country,” compounding the mistake by saying “not a single private in the ranks will stand closer to the enemy’s lines than he in whose hand is the standard.” Press coverage was enormous, with Bryan’s every word printed on the next day’s front page. The country had never seen anything like this tour.40
At the Garden, the crowd screamed for ten minutes as he appeared onstage, hands raised, palms out, motioning for silence as a giant American flag dropped down from the rafters behind him. A fat man sitting onstage called for three cheers. The crowd prepared for a humdinger, not knowing the evening had reached its high point.41
Bryan pulled out a large manuscript and began to read aloud. He was flat, uninspiring, and without energy. Within fifteen minutes, people began leaving. Bryan leaned against the podium as he read from the thick stack of paper, further draining energy from the hall, which was ovenlike as the city suffered through a record heat wave. Around the thirty-minute mark, someone yelled, “Good night, Billy!” and left. Later, another man screamed, “Put away the paper, Bill, and talk!” By the time Bryan finished his one-hour, fifty-minute recitation, a third of the audience had walked out.42
Historian James Ford Rhodes, Hanna’s brother-in-law, captured the fundamental flaw: “Bryan, though a orator, was a poor reader.” Even Mary Bryan found fault, telling a reporter, “An audience cannot be made enthusiastic by reading to them.” As important, Bryan was exhausted and his voice depleted from his many speeches en route.43
To sound serious, Bryan also deliberately delivered the speech in a flat tone, failing to give the audience the fighting speech they expected, and devoted too much time to silver and not enough to the income tax, trusts, monopolies, and Cleveland’s injunctions, all more important issues to Eastern working-class Democrats.44
Roosevelt was brutal, telling his sister, “Bryan fell with a bang.” The speech so unnerved Democratic managers that the next day, they canceled the rest of Bryan’s planned Eastern trip and sent him on a nine-day vacation.45
IN THE MEANTIME, BRYAN gained a formidable opponent when Bourke Cockran returned from Europe. At first glance, the Irish-born lawyer was unimpressive: five feet eleven, plain, gray eyes, mustached, and, though endowed with long dark brown hair, not particularly handsome. But when the stocky former New York Democratic congressman spoke, he exuded charisma, power, and personality. He had just ended an affair with the American-born widow of a British peer. Jennie Churchill had been the wife of now-deceased Lord Randolph Churchill and was mother of a young officer in the 4th Queen’s Hussars named Winston. The suitor and the son had become friends. Cockran’s talent as a speaker dazzled Churchill, who later wrote he “inspired me when I was 19 & taught me how to use every note of the human voice like an organ. He was my model.”46
Met dockside by reporters, Cockran described the situation “as the gravest in the history of the country” except 1860. A Bryan presidency would “paralyze industry by using all the powers of Government to take property from the hands of those who created it and place it in the hands of those who covet it.” The election was “a contest for the existence of civilization” in which “no man can remain neutral.”
Though a lifelong Democrat, he placed Bryan’s defeat “above the interests of any organization or party.” Cockran would travel the country under the auspices of the nonpartisan Honest Money League without compensation or expenses to encourage Democrats to vote for McKinley or, if one was organized, a gold Democratic ticket, though he believed “support of McKinley is the best method to defeat the socialistic and anarchistic programme adopted at Chicago.”47
Cockran responded to Bryan in Madison Square Garden a week after Bryan’s event, deploying his Irish baritone for a frontal assault on silver. The campaign, he charged, was “a question of whether the powers of this government shall be used to protect honest industry or to tempt the citizen to dishonesty. On this question honest men cannot differ. It is one of morals and of justice.” He summoned sound-money Democrats to crush “the seed of Populist Socialism.” In contrast to Bryan, Cockran’s hour-and-a-quarter speech was delivered without notes and frequently interrupted by applause.48
After reading the London papers, Churchill wired his mentor that his speech was “a great moral victory.” Platt was ecstatic: “It was the greatest speech I ever listened to. McKinley’s election is now assured.” But the Easy Boss was making too much of one speech against Bryan and too little of the Boy Orator’s talents, which just might be reinvigorated with a vacation.49