William Jennings Bryan

Context: With the outbreak of the Spanish-American War in 1898, Bryan was forced to consider his party's stance on foreign policy. On one hand, Bryan was critical of militarism. Yet Spain's suppression of Cuban and Filipino self-government movements went against his view of his country's "Global Mission." He envisioned the United States spreading democracy to the rest of the world. With this idealism in mind, Bryan enthusiastically supported President McKinley's declaration of war against Spain. According to historian William Leuchtenburg, "few political figures exceeded the enthusiasm of William Jennings Bryan for the Spanish war." Bryan argued that "universal peace cannot come until justice is enthroned throughout the world. Until the right has triumphed in every land and love reigns in every heart, government must, as a last resort, appeal to force". He volunteered for duty and became colonel of a Nebraska militia regiment. He contracted typhoid fever in Florida and stayed there to recuperate, never seeing combat. Bryan surprised many of his fellow party members by supporting the ratification of the Treaty of Paris, which resulted from the United States' defeat of Spain. The treaty granted the United States control of Puerto Rico, Guam, Cuba, the Philippines, and parts of the West Indies. Many of Bryan's supporters were opposed to what they perceived as Republican aspirations of turning the country into an imperial power and criticized Bryan for hypocritically supporting the ratification of the treaty. Bryan justified supporting the treaty by arguing that the issue of imperialism should be decided upon by the American people at the ballot boxes and not in Congress. However, when the Bacon Resolution (a proposed supplement to the Treaty of Paris which would allow the Filipinos a "stable and independent government") failed to pass, Bryan began publicly speaking out against the Republicans' imperial aspirations. Bryan gave a speech at the Democratic National Convention in 1900 simply titled "Imperialism." In this speech he discusses his views against the annexation of the Philippines, questioning the United States' right to overpower people of another country just to gain a military base. He mentions, at the beginning of the speech, that the United States should not try to emulate the imperialism of Great Britain and other European countries, who were in this period extending their power in Asia and Africa. In 1900 Bryan ran as an anti-imperialist, finding himself in alliance with industrialist Andrew Carnegie, as well as others who had fought against silver. Republicans mocked Bryan as indecisive, or a coward. Bryan combined anti-imperialism with free silver, saying: "The nation is of age and it can do what it pleases; it can spurn the traditions of the past; it can repudiate the principles upon which the nation rests; it can employ force instead of reason; it can substitute might for right; it can conquer weaker people; it can exploit their lands, appropriate their property and kill their people; but it cannot repeal the moral law or escape the punishment decreed for the violation of human rights." In a typical day he gave four hour-long speeches and shorter talks that added up to six hours of speaking. At an average rate of 175 words a minute, he turned out 63,000 words a day, enough to fill 52 columns of a newspaper. In Wisconsin, he once made 12 speeches in 15 hours. Despite Bryan's tremendous energy, McKinley and the Republicans were too strong to defeat. The GOP invested ten times as much money into the campaign as did Bryan's Democratic Party. While Bryan declared "Imperialism to be the paramount issue," he had difficulty differentiating his platform from that of the Republican party. While he argued for the United States to take on the role of a protectorate to the Philippines, the Republicans argued that annexation of the Philippines would eventually lead to independence. With the issue of imperialism being defined in these vaguely similar terms, the Republicans' "full dinner pail" platform of a strong American industrial economy proved to be more important to voters than questions of the morality of annexing the Philippines. Bryan held his base in the South, a one-party Democratic region where virtually only white men voted, since the effective disenfranchisement of most blacks at the turn of the century, but lost part of the West; McKinley retained the populous Northeast and Midwest and rolled up a comfortable margin of victory. McKinley won the electoral college with a count of 292 votes compared to Bryan's 155. Bryan's hold on his party was weakened, while his erstwhile allies the Populists had virtually disappeared from the arena. Following his defeat in the election of 1900, Bryan needed money, and his powerful voice and 100% name recognition were assets that could be capitalized. For the next 25 years, Bryan was the most popular speaker on the Chautauqua circuit, delivering thousands of paid speeches on current events in hundreds of towns and cities across the country, even while serving as Secretary of State. He usually charged $500 per speech in addition to a percentage of the profits. He mostly spoke about Christianity, but covered a wide variety of topics. His most popular lecture (and his personal favorite) was "The Prince of Peace", which stressed that Christian theology was the solid foundation of morality, and individual and group morality was the foundation for peace and equality. Another famous lecture from this period, "The Value of an Ideal", was a stirring call to public service. In a 1905 speech, Bryan warned that "the Darwinian theory represents man reaching his present perfection by the operation of the law of hate, the merciless law by which the strong crowd out and kill off the weak. If this is the law of our development then, if there is any logic that can bind the human mind, we shall turn backward to the beast in proportion as we substitute the law of love. I choose to believe that love rather than hatred is the law of development." Bryan threw himself into the work of the Social Gospel. He served in organizations with numerous theological liberals--he sat on the temperance committee of the Federal Council of Churches, and on the general committee of the short-lived Inter-church World Movement. In 1901 Bryan founded a weekly magazine, The Commoner, calling on Democrats to dissolve the trusts, regulate the railroads more tightly, and support the Progressive Movement. Bryan was not a stranger to editorial practices having worked at the Omaha World Herald from 1894 to 1896 this early work provided himself a foundation in publishing. From 1901 to 1923 Bryan would publish and edit The Commoner curating, at its peak, a circulation of nearly 275,000 copies annually across the United States. The paper revealed Bryan's evolving thoughts on political discourse. He regarded prohibition as a "local" issue and did not endorse a constitutional amendment until 1910. In London in 1906, he presented a plan to the Inter-Parliamentary Peace Conference for arbitration of disputes that he hoped would avert warfare. He tentatively called for nationalization of the railroads, then backtracked and called only for more regulation. His party nominated Bourbon Democrat Alton B. Parker in 1904, who lost to Roosevelt. For two years following this defeat, Bryan would pursue his public speaking ventures on an international stage. From 1904 to 1906, Bryan traveled globally, preaching, sightseeing with his wife Mary, lecturing, and all while escaping the political upheaval in Washington. Bryan crusaded as well for legislation to support introduction of the initiative and referendum as a means of giving voters a direct voice, making a whistle-stop campaign tour of Arkansas in 1910. Bryan's speech to the students of Washington and Lee University began the Washington and Lee Mock Convention. Bryan owned land in Nebraska and a 240-acre (0.97 km2) ranch in Texas; he paid for both with his strong earnings from speeches and The Commoner. CANNOTANSWER

Question: What are some examples of the topics William Jennings Bryan spoke about?
Answer: In a 1905 speech, Bryan warned that "the Darwinian theory represents man reaching his present perfection by the operation of the law of hate,