Bryan, William Jennings (1860–1925)

US politician who campaigned unsuccessfully for the presidency three times: as the Populist and Democratic nominee in 1896, as an anti-imperialist Democrat in 1900, and as a Democratic tariff reformer in 1908. He served as President Woodrow Wilson's secretary of state 1913–15. In the early 1920s he was a leading fundamentalist and opponent of Clarence Darrow in the Scopes monkey trial.

Bryan was born in Salem, Illinois, and educated at Illinois College and Union College of Law, Chicago. In 1891 he was elected to Congress from the First District of Nebraska, which had previously been Republican, but the Democrat Bryan carried it with his demands for banking and tariff reform and his call for ‘free silver’. He served two terms in Congress, and took a leading part in the debates on the questions of bimetallism and free trade.

When the presidential convention of the Democratic party met in Chicago in 1896, it was known that the issue would be joined between the gold-standard Democrats of the east and the free-silver forces of the west and south. Bryan delivered a stirring speech for free silver in which he used the phrase ‘You shall not crucify mankind on a cross of gold’. Bryan was nominated on a free-silver plank. The Republicans promptly nominated William McKinley on a gold-standard ticket. An exciting campaign ensued, but Bryan was unsuccessful.

Undismayed by the defeat of 1896, the Democrats renominated Bryan for president against McKinley in 1900. This time his campaign included not only the free-silver issue, but a bitter crusade against imperialism growing out of the US annexation of the Philippines, Guam, and Puerto Rico as a result of the victories in the Spanish–American War. Bryan once more went down to crushing defeat. Again in 1908 the Democrats nominated Bryan and again Bryan lost. Bryan held office as Woodrow Wilson's secretary of state until June 1915, when he resigned because of President Wilson's attitude over the sinking of the Lusitania.