Page:1900; or, The last President (IA 1900orlastpresid00lock).pdf/19



pens of many writers would not suffice to describe with anything like historical fullness and precision, the wild scenes of excitement which, on the morning after election day, burst forth on the floors of the various exchanges throughout the Union. The larger and more important the money centre, the deeper, blacker and heavier the despair which sank upon them after the violent ebullitions of protest, defiance and execration had subsided. With some, it seemed that visions of their swift but sure impoverishment only served to transform the dark and dismal drama of revolution and disintegration into a side-splitting farce, and they greeted the prospective loss of their millions with loud guffaws and indescribable antics of horseplay and unseemly mirth.

As the day wore on, the news became worse and worse. It was only too apparent that the House of Representatives of the Fifty-fifth Congress would be controlled by the combined vote of the Populists and Free Silver men, while the wild joy with which the entire South welcomed the election of Bryan and Sewall left little doubt in the minds of the Northern people that the Southern Senators would, to a man, range themselves on the Administration side of the great conflict into which the Republic was soon to be precipitated. Add to these the twenty Senators of the Free Silver States of the North, and the new President would have the Congress of the Republic