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 British liner Lusitania, carrying American passengers, by a German U boat. Never before or since has a Secretary of State embodied so moral or moralistic an outlook. Bryan saw his role as that of "Secretary of Peace." Yet in Latin America he proved to be an outstanding interventionist.
The issues faced by William Jennings Bryan as Secretary of State, and his response to them, were in some ways similar, in other ways strangely different, from the responses of American statesmen to comparable problems of war and peace today. This essay examines Bryan's ideals and his impact on American diplomacy in this critical period.
Today, the name of William Jennings Bryan is probably most widely associated with the Scopes "Monkey Trial," the famous evolution law 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 of "free silver," (unlike, for example, the creationism versus evolution controversy), has no resonance in current political life.
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 hea...