William Jennings Bryan's Ideals and Impact

William Jennings Bryan, moral crusader and pacifist, was Woodrow Wilson's first Secretary of State, serving during the first year of World War One in Europe until he resigned in response to President Wilson's hard line on the sinking of the Lusitania by a German Uboat. Never before or since has a Secretary of State embodied such a moral outlook. This report examines Bryan's ideals and his impact on American diplomacy in this critical period.

Today, the name of William Jennings Bryan is probably most associated with the Scopes "Monkey Trial," the famous evolutionlaw courtroom battle of 1925, in which Bryan took what we would now call the creationist side against Clarence Darrow. Some may vaguely recall that he made a fiery speech about the "cross of gold" in 1896, but this means little to us, in large part because the issue, "free silver," no longer has the resonance that creationismversusevolution still retains in current affairs.

The full dimension of Bryan's role in American public life has thus been lost to popular memory. Remembered only as a precursor of the Religious Right, he was actually one of the most radical mainstream politicians of his age, and three times the Democratic nominee for President. Made Secretary of State when Woodrow Wilson finally won the Presidency for the Democrats in the 1912 election, William Jennings Bryan held that office through the critical months before and after the outbreak of World War One. The war was a he

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frighteous missionary mind."6 The basis of his international outlook was that war was not only immoral, but on the practical point of being abandoned by the civilized world. In his whole outlook, Bryan was "almost compulsively optimistic."7 The programmatic embodiment of this was a series of "reconciliation treaties" which the United States entered into with various countries. These were designed to at least stall off an outbreak of war, to let "peacedragout."8 By the ominous month of August, 1914, Bryan had negotiated thirty such treaties, of which twenty had been ratified. Treaties 5Ibid. 6Ibid., 126. 7Levine, 5. 8Koenig, 511.had been signed with all major powers except Germany, Austria, and Japan. When Bryan came into office in 1913, the items he found on top of his desk were relations with Japan and with Central America. The cause of contention with Japan was not international differences, but immigration and racism. Japanese immigrants were not welcome in West Coast states. In California, Progressive Governor Hiram Johnson signed legislation restricting Japanese immigrants from owning land.

Category: History - W