Cross of Gold

William Jennings Bryan (1860-1925) was born and raised in Salem, Illinois. He was the son of Silas Lillard Bryan, a judge and Democrat. Bryan showed a skill for oration at a young age and followed his father in both his career as a lawyer and his Democratic affiliation. He studied law at Union Law College—now known as Northwestern University School of Law—in Chicago and began his practice in Jacksonville, Illinois. This continued until he moved to Lincoln, Nebraska. There he began his political career by running for congress, winning a seat in the House of Representatives where he served from 1891 to 1895.

During his political career, he served as a champion of progressive causes, which later included women’s suffrage, the minimum wage, and rights for union workers. He was somewhat responsible for the shift away from the prior conservative policies of the Democratic Party. His most well-known area of focus was the country’s economy. Bryan emphasized the economic interests of his native rural Midwest over the urban Northeast, and he ran in 1896 on a platform focusing on bimetallism. Bryan was an idealist whose religion and politics linked to one another, and this connection appeared both in the speech’s