Question

n the presidential campaign of 1896, how did William Jennings Bryan represent the Populist Party's goal of building a broad-based movement?

Answer 1

William Jennings Bryan was a former Democratic congressman from Nebraska, who gained the Democratic party nomination of 1896 after his famous "Cross of Gold" speech. He was defeated in the general election by the Republican candidate William McKinley.

Bryan's goal for the campaign was to build a broad-based movement. He tried to achieve that through a series of speeches across the United States in 1895 and 1896. His oratory skills made him very popular. He spoke some 600 times, to an estimated 5,000,000 listeners. He spoke on the issue of currency (mainly focused on silver), which was very relevant to all Americans following the Economic Panic of 1893. Although defeated, he remained a popular figure until his death.

Answer 2

William Jennings Bryan was a politician that was born in Illinois in 1860. He was a member of the House of Representatives between 1891 and 1895 for the State of Nebraska. During, Democratic National Convention in 1896, Jennings Bryan gave a celebrated 35-minutes speech in which, he explained why he supported an expansionary monetary policy featuring the unrestricted coinage of silver into money and defending that "the Democratic idea has been that if you legislate to make the masses prosperous, their prosperity will find its way up through every class which rests upon them". This speech made a favorable impact on the convention and he won the nomination for the Democratic party to face William McKinley, without the votes from those delegates that supported the gold standard. This speech is known as "Cross of Gold speech". Later Democratic presidents such as Woodrow Wilson and Franklin D. Roosevelt took this philosophy, to legislate for the masses leading to prosperity for everyone, as an undeniable essence to their economic and domestic policies.