d free silver. As two minority parties they had
felt in 1892 a tendency to fuse against the Republicans. By conviction
they were both obliged to fight the party of Hanna and McKinley, in
which the forces of business, finance, and manufacture were assembled in
the joint cause of protection and the gold standard. It was convenient
to make this fight in close alliance, the more so because the Populist
doctrine of free silver had permeated the Democratic organization in the
West and South. In the conventions of 1896 more than thirty States, as
Nebraska had done in 1894, asked for immediate free coinage, and a
majority of the Democratic delegates were pledged to this before they
came to Chicago. They gained control of the convention on the first
vote, determined contests in their own favor, and offered a plank
demanding "the free and unlimited coinage of both silver and gold at the
present legal ratio of sixteen to one without waiting for the aid or
consent of any other nation."

The debate on the silver plank was long and bitter, although its passage
was certain. It was closed by the leader of the Nebraska delegation,
William Jennings Bryan, who had been a former Congressman, and who
later said, "An opportunity to close such a debate had never come to me
before, and I doubt if as good an opportunity had ever come to any other
person during this generation." He took advantage of the moment, in a
tired convention that had been wrangling in bitterness for several days,
that had deserted the old politicians, and that had no candidate. He was
only thirty-six years old, his face was unfamiliar, and his name had
rarely been heard outside his State, but he had been preaching free
silver with religious intensity and oratorical skill. His speech had
grown through repeated speaking, and reached its climax as he pleaded
for free silver: "If they dare to come out in the open field and defend
the gold standard as a good thing, we will fight them to the uttermost.
Having behind us the producing masses of this nation and the world,
supported by the commercial interests, the laboring interests, and the
toilers everywhere, we will answer their demand for the gold standard by
saying to them: You shall not press down upon the brow of labor this
crown of thorns; you shall not crucify mankind upon a cross of gold."
Swept off its feet by the enthusiasm for silver, and having no other
candidate in view, the convention nominated Bryan on the fifth b