osing days of the campaign panic struck the conservative classes and
produced for Hanna campaign funds such as had never been seen, and cries
of corruption met the charges of repudiation.

An English visitor in New York wrote on the Sunday before election: "Of
course nothing can be done till Wednesday. All America is aflame with
excitement--and New York itself is at fever heat. I have never seen such
a sight as yesterday. The whole city was a mass of flags and innumerable
Republican and Democratic insignia--with the streets thronged with over
two million people. The whole business quarter made a gigantic parade
that took seven hours in its passage--and the business men alone
amounted to over 100,000. Every one--as, indeed, not only America, but
Great Britain and all Europe--is now looking eagerly for the final word
on Tuesday night. The larger issues are now clearer: not merely that the
Bryanite fifty-cent dollar (instead of the standard hundred-cent) would
have far-reaching disastrous effects, but that the whole struggle is one
of the anarchic and destructive against the organic and constructive
forces."

The vote was taken in forty-five States, Utah having been admitted early
in 1896, and no election had evoked a larger proportion of the possible
vote. Bryan received 6,500,000 votes, nearly a million more than any
elected President had ever received, but he ran 600,000 votes behind
McKinley. The Republican list included every State north of Virginia and
Tennessee, and east of the Missouri River, except Missouri and South
Dakota. The solid South was confronted by a solid North and East, while
the West was divided. McKinley received 271 electoral votes; Bryan, 176.

Education played a large part in the result, and economic opinion
believes that the better cause prevailed. But cool analysis had less
effect than emotion and self-interest at the time. The lowest point of
depression had been reached during 1894, while the harvests of 1895 and
1896 were larger and more profitable than had been known for several
years. Free silver was a hard-times movement that weakened in the face
of better crops. "Give us good times," said Reed to Richard Watson
Gilder, "and all will come out right." Inflation was not to be desired
by the citizen who had in hand the funds to pay his debts. When he
became solvent he could understand the theories of sound finance. It is
probable that nature as well as gold was a potent aid to Hanna in
procu