A Godly Hero: The Life of William Jennings Bryan

William Jennings Bryan ran for president more than most sane people would ever attempt. A devout religious figure his life was filled with tragedy. While he would never be president he would make many efforts to fight for the common man and give one of the best speeches in American political history telling his listeners that he would not be crucified upon a cross of gold. My one disappointment with this book is that it only spent a chapter on the scopes Monkey trial which I think was a fascinating time in Bryan's life and deserve more attention. Overall if you are looking for a book that can take you decade through decade of the Gilded Age this is a great way to look at it. While it does not focus on the industrialization you get a much better perspective of the common Americans from this book than any other. This is a must read for anyone studying the Gilded Age

Michael Kazin's previous work examining late 19th century American populism serves as an ideal background to write this fascinating revisionist biography of William Jennings Bryan. Bryan, famous as a perennial presidential candidate and as Darrow's straight man in "Inherit the Wind," has never received the consideration he deserved as one of the originators of the modern Democratic Party. That is a pity one people should applaud Kazin for remedying. Indeed, Kazin capably and convincingly argued that despite his defeats, or perhaps as a result of them, Bryan helped lay the groundwork for ascendancy of the Democratic Party in the 1930s. From the middle of the 19th century through to its end, the Democratic Party rested on the bedrock first of slavery and then, after the Civil War, on racism and the grievances of the Old Confederacy. Bryan, by merging progressive ideas into the party, such as the rights of workers, Corporate taxes, progressive income taxes, safe food, and "free silver" began the long march towards the ideas that became the core of the national Democratic Party during FDR's New Deal. Of particular interest to modern readers, and more than a little ironically, he bound these ideas together with Christian theology, ideas of communal obligation, social equity, and national responsibility. Religious language proved central to Bryan's success politically. While never winning the presidency, Kazin offers strong evidence that he integrated these ideas into the American consciousness, first into the Democratic Party and later into that of the majority of its citizens. For Bryan was not only a believer, but he shrewdly understood the power of such images as the Cross of Gold reminded people of their responsibilities to their fellow citizens and that idea's labeled radical were, in fact, central to America's dominant Judeo-Christian heritage. In a time when other party leaders saw their best hope as imitating the Republicans, Bryan understood that long term strength comes through creating contrast with ones opponents. Unlike many biographers, Kazin does not gloss over his subjects failings. Bryan accepted, indeed embraced, the racism of the party he led, despite his identification with the common man and the oppression faced by those less powerful. Far from excusing Bryan because of his context, Kazin rightly chastises him for such positions. More than anything, Kazin ably shows how dramatic shifts are possible in American politics. As Democrats seem to wander aimlessly as a party left in the apparent perpetual minority, Kazin offers a historic case study well worth consideration. Bryan may be long dead, but parts of his legacy are well worth further consideration.

for there went virtue out of him, and healed them all. Luke 6:19 There is a tendency in the U.S. today that when we think of William Jennings Bryan, if we think about him at all, we think of the aging demagogue defending Creationism at the "Scopes Monkey Trial". Bryan's image seems coextensive with the actor Frederic March's characterization of a preening, self-righteous zealot in the movie "Inherit the Wind". Michael Kazin's "A Godly Hero: The Life of William Jennings Bryan" does a wonderful job of capturing the political life of a man who captured the ears and hearts of millions of Americans from 1896 until his death in 1925 at the age of 65. Millions of American farmers and laborers saw virtue in Bryan and sought to touch him. Kazin goes a long way towards explaining the social and political phenomenon that was William Jennings Bryan. Kazin's "A Godly Hero" is both well-written and meticulously researched. Bryan, known to friends and foes alike as the "Great Commoner" was the Democratic Party's candidate for President in 1896, 1900, and 1908. Kazin does an excellent job of presenting Bryan as more than a cartoon-like caricature. Although always a devout, fervent Christian Bryan rose to national acclaim not on the basis of his religious world view but on a populist platform that was more than a bit radical for his time. Kazin points out, of course, that Bryan's political views were informed by his Christian beliefs, but notes that those beliefs led him to fight as a populist for social justice. Bryan's three presidential campaigns called for support for the rights of small farmers and factory workers as they did battle against the big railroads and factory owners. He sought to nationalize the railroads, legalize the right to strike, and to be among the earliest campaigners for women's suffrage. Those beliefs led him to strike out against the incipient imperialism of the United States as it launched its first overseas military adventures in Cuba and the Philippines. Bryan's religious beliefs may also be linked to the antiwar stance he took as Woodrow Wilson's Secretary of State in 1913-1914. He opposed the government's perceived movement towards war even as it stressed its ongoing neutrality. Kazin takes pains to point out that Bryan's stern religious beliefs placed him on the side of social progress and not on the side of reaction. This is an important consideration in any historical examination undertaken in an era when strong religious convictions are often invariably linked (and often unfairly) to social and political conservatism. Kazin does an excellent job of putting Bryan's religious beliefs into the context of an era in which the progressive and populist movements grew throughout the country's urban areas and farm lands. Bryan's meteoric rise to fame was facilitated in no small part by his oratorical skills. Both supporters and foes marveled at Bryan's ability to keep a crowd transfixed during his speeches. Kazin's descr

I enjoyed the book without really planning on it. Kazin makes a long ago period come alive, and it is amusing looking at the years of Theodore Roosevelt from a deliberately oblique angle, as it were. As Kazin points out, Bryan and Roosevelt were nearly contemporaries, born a mere two years apart, and their lives intertwined on many levels, though they were miles apart in their views on--well, on just about everything. Everything, that is, except the power of manifest destiny and the call of the American Empire. Kazin brings it all up close, and the gallery of American politicians, many of them long forgotten, jump into life. You can almost feel you were at one of those long-drawn-out political conventions of the turn of the century, and his cast of characters are vivid and fleshy. Do you know how in the YEARS OF LYNDON JOHNSON author Robert Caro manages to animate all manner of pols, give them flesh and blood? Kazin's style will remind you of Caro's way with a tale, only his task might be more difficult for the era was a good 60 years before LBJ's and in some ways more difficult to access. Some of the platforms men stood on seem almost to have a schizophrenic edge to them, and Jennings Bryan, as Kazin admits, has an opaque quality to his thinking that mirrors the perplexities of the common man of his day (I use the words "man" and "men" in shorthand to denote a day before universal suffrage, not that Kazin's biography doesn't include some powerful female figures, such as Bryan's acerbic, "choleric" widow Mary, who spared no one the foul side of her tongue and when she had something to say she let you have it!) Thus Bryan shamefully stood by when Josephus Daniels urged Democrats in the Carolinas to prevent black voters from going to the polls by any means necessary. The time was ripe for a revival of lynching and, disgracefully, Bryan's policies did nothing to prevent that. And yet to all intents and purposes he was a progressive on many other fronts, a John the Baptist figure to FDR's Christ, a voice crying out in the wilderness. It was an era when ordinary people spoke in the cadences of the King Jamws version of the Bible, for approximately 80 per cent of US citizens were all intimately familiar with the contents of that one book, even those who had never cracked another book. The language of the Bible was a lingua franca, understood by all, and it might be said that Jennings Bryan exploited this situation and fairly revelled in it. He was the leading orator in an age of great ones. Unfortunately few of his speeches have been preserved on celluloid! I was especially impressed by Kazin's coverage of Bryan's years in Miami, a period often overlooked by previous biographers. One of these days we will wake up and realize that everything bad or good to come out of the 20th century originated in Miami, a city I long one day to visit.