appear deeply contradictory: Bryan, the anti imperialist idealist, was highly prone to U.S. military interventions in Latin America. Yet in foreign as in domestic policy, Bryan was in many ways ahead of his time.
Woodrow Wilson was himself an idealist among statesmen, but he did not appoint Bryan as Secretary of State with the intent of launching a moral crusade. The appointment was in fact thoroughly political.2 Bryan was a leader of a wing of the Democratic Party, and a sometime rival of Wilson. Giving him the highest post of the Cabinet was in part a reward, in part an act of fence mending.
In order to understand Bryan and his policies, it is
necessary to understand the elements of change and continuity ________
1For example, Paolo Coletta and Lawrence Levine.
2Lawrence W. Levine, Defender of the Faith (New York: Oxford University Press, 1965), 4.
in the relations of the Democratic and Republican parties. The Democrats of the early twentieth century (then often called "the Democracy") were the party of progressive social legislation; indeed, much of the social agenda that we associate with the New Deal and even the Great Society originally became the Democratic party program under William Jennings Bryan. The contemporary Republicans were strictly "Eastern Establishment," closely associated with large money interests.
On racial issues, however, party relationships were different. The Democrats were the party of the segregationist South, and they had no difficulty in supporting "states' rights" when it came to state laws imposing discrimination. This would prove to be significant in the shaping of U.S. policy towards Japan.3
Bryan came into office ready to impose wholesale changes of policy and personnel. The State Department was already known as an abode of pinstriped Foggy Bottom diplomats, representing an Eastern ...