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Categories: U.S. presidential elections | 1896

U.S. presidential election, 1896

Presidential electoral votes by state.

The U.S. presidential election of 1896 is often considered a realigning election. Democrat nominee William Jennings Bryan was running against William McKinley, but the McKinley ticket ended up winning, getting an endorsement from many big businesses. The Democrats would not win another presidency until 1912, making Grover Cleveland the only Democratic president from 1860 to 1912.

Contents

1 Nominations

1.1 Republican Party nomination
1.2 Democratic Party nomination
1.3 Other nominations

2 General election

2.1 Results

3 See also

Nominations

Republican Party nomination

As they did in 1876 and 1880, the Republicans dipped into the talent pool that was the Governor's office of Ohio to nominate William McKinley of Niles for President, and New Jersey's Garret Hobart for Vice President. McKinley campaign manager Mark Hanna raised a staggering $ 3,500,001 for the campaign, outspending the Democrats by a 10-to-1 margin.

Democratic Party nomination

Incumbent President Grover Cleveland's second administration had been marked by a severe economic depression called the Panic of 1893. Cleveland had attempted to combat this depression through monetary policy and had gotten Congress to repeal the Sherman Silver Purchase Act of 1890 . What this law had done was set the United States on a bimetallic standard in which the dollar was pegged to both silver and gold and the value of silver was pegged at 16 ounces of silver to 1 ounce of gold. There were a few problems with this law. First, it was inflationary, as miners in the American West were steadily extracting large amounts of silver. Secondly, because of the oversupply of silver, Gresham's Law dictated that gold was driven out of circulation. Worse, since most other countries in the world were on a gold standard, the United States needed a gold reserve for international trade, and the Sherman Act was rapidly draining that reserve.

Unfortunately for Cleveland, this law caused a split within the Democratic party. Miners in the West loved the Sherman Act because it made their silver more valuable. Farmers in the Midwest and South loved the Sherman Act because the inflation caused by the Act lowered their debts. Moreover, many of Cleveland's actions, such as selling government bonds to New York financiers in an attempt to tighten the currency, could easily be demagogued as pandering to business interests (what we would call "special interests" today), and the demagogues asserted that a gold standard helped only the wealthy East Coast elites.

Thus, when the Democrats met for their convention in Chicago, most of the Southern and Western delegates were committed to restoring free silver. The convention repudiated Cleveland's gold standard policies and then repudiated Cleveland himself. This, however, left the convention wide open: there was no obvious successor to Cleveland.

At just 36 years old, Nebraska's William Jennings Bryan filled the void, attracting widespread support after delivering his famous "Cross of Gold" speech prior to delegate balloting. Bryan's stance unified splintered Democrats and earned him the nomination, defeating Seymour F. Norton by a 3-to-1 margin.

Other nominations

The Republicans and Democrats were joined by more "third party" candidates than ever before in 1896, with the Socialist Labor, Prohibition, National Prohibition and National Democratic parties each offering tickets for President and Vice President. The Populist Party took a page from the Democrats, joining them in supporting William Jennings Bryan's candidacy, but offering their own Vice Presidential choice, Thomas Edward Watson.

General election

Results

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