William Jennings Bryan: “Cross of Gold” Speech

About the Author

William Jennings Bryan was just thirty-six years old when he delivered the “Cross of Gold” Speech at the 1896 Democratic National Convention. He was born in Salem, Illinois, on March 19, 1860. During the late 1880s, after attending Whipple Academy and Illinois College, Bryan studied law and moved to Nebraska. He soon plunged into Democratic politics. Elected to Congress in 1890, he served two terms in the House before seeking a Senate seat in 1894. That campaign failed, and Bryan turned his attention to the Democratic presidential nomination in 1896.

Bryan lost the 1896 general election to William McKinley, and he lost again to McKinley in 1900 and to William Howard Taft in 1908. In 1925 he played a key role in the famed Scopes Monkey Trial in Tennessee, in which he argued that the teaching of evolution should be banned in public schools. He died in Dayton, Tennessee, on July 26, 1925, just five days after the Scopes trial ended.