for a candidate to ha\e a strong personal "image," 

 and asserting the primary role of the presidential 

 candidate as a party leader.^ Matthew Josephson 

 caught Bryan's impact upon presidential campaigning 

 when he wrote: 



With his sheer youthful strength and tireless voice, 

 Bryan rivaled the eflfect of the modern radio broadcasts. 

 ... It was a circus-like performance, it was also un- 

 precedented, since tradition held that the candidate for 

 the highest office in the land must dissemble his wish for 

 that honor, and appear not to seek the office overtly.^ 



Like most politicians, he represented a certain 

 combination of attitudes which developed out of his 

 own upbringing and his experiences as a young 

 adult. Professor Paul Glad has described the general 

 framework of attitudes which Bryan shared, to some 

 extent, with other citizens of his time and place: 



The Commoner's progressivism was founded not on 

 political contrivances or on economic panaceas; it was 

 founded on the faith that was his heritage as a son of the 

 Middle Border. His appeal to the hearts of his country- 

 men, his doctrine of love, his emphasis on sacrifice as the 

 measure of greatness, his belief in majority rule, his devo- 

 tion to the common man, his conception of good and 

 evil, his revivalistic approach to social and economic 

 problems, his confidence in God's purpose as he under- 

 stood it — all these are traceable to a mentality that found 

 the values of an agrarian environment completely 

 satisfying. 5 



Bryan embodied what Ralph Gabriel has called the 

 American Democratic Faith, consisting of a belief in 

 the fundamental law, in the free and responsible in- 

 dividual, and in the Mission of America.^ His com- 

 mitment to democracy and the unswerving belief 

 which he held in the essential rightness of popular rule 

 were genuine and remained with him until the end of 

 his life, forming both a strength and a major weakness 

 in his capacity for political leadership. 



It is the intention of this paper to explore the back- 

 ground of Bryan's campaign techniques, in order to 



3 More than half a century earher, W'ilhani Mcnry Marrison 

 had acquired an "image" during the riotous Log Cabin and 

 Hard Cider campaign, but Harrison was not in any true sense a 

 party leader, nor did he rely entirely upon a personal campaign 

 to achieve his election. Robert G. Gunderson, The Log-Cabin 

 Campaign (Lexington, Kentucky, 1957). provides a lively ac- 

 count of the Harrison-Tyler campaign of 1840. 



< M.ATTHEW Josephson, The Polilicos. J86.5-J896 (New York, 

 1938), p. 688. 



5 Glad, op. cit. (footnote 2), p. 177. 



' Ralph H. Gabriel, The Course of American Democratic 

 Thought, 2nd ed. (New York, 1956), ch. 2. 



arrive at certain conclusions concerning his own con- 

 tributions to the practices of cainpaigning, and to 

 suggest the importance of his campaign techniques 



for the candidate himself.' 



Shaping the Image 



FAMILY BACKGROUND 



William Jennings Bryan owed a large measure of 

 his political interest to his father, for it was from 

 Silas Bryan that he inherited his party affiliations and 

 many of his comictions. Silas, a Jacksonian Demo- 

 crat of ancient lineage and unflinching devotion, had 

 been an Illinois politician of rather modest accom- 

 plishments, a state .senator and a judge during 

 William's boyhood. .Although William recalled his 

 father's intense piety and his stern discipline, he 

 underestimated the elder Bryan's political influence 

 on himself. Legend has it that the boy accompanied 

 his father as the latter stumped for Congress in 1872^ 

 other legends put the boy in his father's courtroom, 

 listening to the workings of justice; but for the most 

 part William remembered having little direct contact 

 with his father's political affairs.' Nevertheless, the 

 young man chose a career in politics Instead of one 

 in religion, his other great interest, although there is 

 little e\idence to show that William was influenced 

 directly by his father's campaign techniques.'-' 



' Modern scholars have given little attention to the evolution 

 and significance of Bryan's campaign techniques; however, 

 his own contemporaries were aware of his significance. 

 William Allen White (The Autobiography of William Allen 

 White, New York, 1946, p. 294) recalled that as a conservative 

 if somewhat brash young newspaper editor in Kansas, he 

 feared Bryan's unusual appeal to the masses: "To inc, he was 

 an incarnation of demagogy, the apotheosis of riot, destruction, 

 and carnage." Mark Hanna, McKinley's shrewd and effective 

 campaign director, recognized in 1896 Bryan's extraordinary 

 "personal appeal to the American people .... In order to 

 save the situation enormous exertions would be required, as 

 well as a plan of campaign for which there was as little prec- 

 edent as there was for the situation itself." See Herbert 

 Croly. Marcus Alonzo Hanna. His Life and Work (New York, 

 1912), pp. 209-210, 212. 



* Hibben, op. cit. (footnote 2), pp. 46-47. 



» William Jennings and Mary Baird Bryan, The Memoirs nj 

 William Jennings Bryan (Chicago. 1925), ch. 1 ; hereafter cited as 

 Memoirs. Sec also Paolo E. Coletta, "Silas Bryan of .Salem," 

 Journal of the Illinois Stale Historical Society (March 1949), vol. 42, 

 pp. 57-79. See also the letter from S. S. RufTner, Marksville, 

 Louisiana, September 12, 1896, to Bryan (in Bryan papers 

 Manuscript Division, Library of Congress; hereafter cited as 

 Bryan papers) . RufTner recalled knowing Silas Bryan as a child 



PAPER 46: BRYAN THE CAMP.MGNER 



49 



