The First Battle/Chapter 3

While the repeal bill was under discussion in the Senate, I visited Nebraska as a delegate to the Democratic State Convention which met at Lincoln on the 4th of October, 1893. Outside of my own District (nearly every county of which sent silver delegates) no organized fight was made by the silver Democrats to control the Convention and when I reached Lincoln I found a large majority of the Convention favorable to the President's policy, but nearly, if not quite, half of the delegates to the Convention were willing to assist the President in carrying out his policy to the extent of filling Nebraska's quota of the Federal offices. I was selected by the delegates from my own District as their member of the Committee on Resolutions, but the chairman of the Convention, Hon. T. J. Mahoney of Omaha, then a candidate for United States District Attorney, in deference to the wishes of the Administration Democrats, refused to appoint me. One silver Democrat, Mr. Robert Clegg, was made a member of the Committee, however, and presented the following minority plank on the silver question:

"We are opposed to the unconditional repeal of the Sherman law and demand that the repealing act shall carry out the remainder of the plank in the National Democratic platform of 1892 and provide for the 'coinage of both gold and silver without discrimination against either metal or charge for mintage.'"

By courtesy of Mr. Clegg I obtained the floor and spoke against the majority platform.

The silver plank was defeated by a large majority and the gold Democrats were so delighted with their victory that Messrs. Euclid Martin, W. D. McHugh and three others joined in a telegram to Secretary Morton notifying him of the resolutions passed and sending greeting to the President. Mr. Cleveland has since appointed Mr. Martin postmaster at Omaha and Mr. McHugh United States Judge for the District of Nebraska.

Since the gold standard Democrats have referred to my convention speech as an abandonment of the Democratic party, I reproduce the criticised portion of it from the columns of the Lincoln Weekly Herald of that date:

Mr. Chairman and Gentlemen of the Convention: We are confronted tonight by as important a question as ever came before the Democracy of the State of Nebraska. It is not a personal question, it is a question which rises above individuals. So far as I am personally concerned, it matters nothing whether you vote this amendment up or down; it matters not to me whether you pass resolutions censuring my course or endorsing it. If I am wrong in the position I have taken on this great financial question, I shall fall, though you heap your praises upon me; if I am right, and in my heart, so help me God, I believe I am, I shall triumph yet, although you condemn me in your convention a hundred times. Gentlemen, you are playing in the basement of politics&mdash;there is a higher plane. You cannot settle the great political questions in this way. You think you can pass resolutions censuring a man and that you can humiliate him. I want to tell you that I shall still "more true joy in exile feel" than those delegates who are afraid to vote their own sentiments or represent the wishes of the people, lest they may not get a federal office. Gentlemen, I know not what others may do, but duty to country is above duty to party, and if you represent your constituents in what you have done and will do&mdash;for I do not entertain the fond hope that you who have voted as you have today will change upon this vote&mdash;if you as delegates properly reflect the sentiment of the Democratic party which sent you here; if the resolutions which have been proposed and which you will adopt, express the sentiments of the party in this State; if the party declares in favor of a gold standard, as you will if you pass this resolution; if you declare in favor of the impoverishment of the people of Nebraska; if you intend to make more galling than the slavery of the blacks, the slavery of the debtors of this country; if the Democratic party, after you go home, endorses your action and makes your position its permanent policy, I promise you that I will go out and serve my country and my God under some other name, even if I must go alone.

But, gentlemen, I desire to express it as my humble opinion that the Democratic party of Nebraska will never ratify what you have done here in this convention. In this city, when we had our primaries, there were bankers who called sons of their debtors in and told them how they must vote, but there are too many men in Nebraska who cannot be driven or compelled to vote as somebody else dictates.

The Democratic party was founded by Thomas Jefferson, and Thomas Jefferson dared to defy the wealth and power of his day and plead the cause of the common people, and if the Democratic party is to live it must still plead the cause of the man who wears a colored shirt as well as the man who wears a linen collar. You must choose today what kind of democracy you want. For twenty years the party has denounced the demonetization of silver; for twenty years it has proclaimed it the "crime of the age;" it has heaped upon the Republican party all the opprobrium that language could express because of its connection with demonetization; if you are ready to go down on your knees and apologize for what you have said, you will go without me. On the 14th day of July, 1892, Senator Sherman, of Ohio, introduced in the Senate of the United States a bill substantially like the Wilson bill as it passed the House. Mr. Sherman is the premier of the Republican party, their leader upon financial questions, and you come into this convention and attempt to thrust his bill down the throats of Democrats as a Democratic measure. There sits in Columbus, in the State of Ohio, one long known as "the noblest Roman of them all." He has won and held the affection of the American people as few citizens have done; in the evening of life, crowned with a nation's gratitude, he awaits the summons that will call him home&mdash;where I know there is a reward for men who sacrifice for their country's good&mdash;and from the solitude of his retreat Allen G. Thurman says that he is opposed to unconditional repeal, and when I must choose between Senator Sherman, of Ohio, and Allen G. Thurman, of Ohio, I shall take my democracy from the latter.

Do you say that this is Democracy? Was it in the national platform? Read the platform. Can you find authority for unconditional repeal there? You find a demand for a repeal, but you find a matter far more important than a "cowardly make-shift," you find a demand that we shall coin both "gold and silver without discrimination against either metal or charge for mintage." Are you going to snatch away a fragment of the platform and call that Democratic, while you turn your backs upon the declarations which have been in our platforms for the last twenty years? The Democratic party in Congress has on many occasions expressed itself and until this year there was never a time but that a majority of the Democrats in both House and Senate voted for the free coinage of silver at 16 to 1 by this country alone, and in this Congress, when the question came up in the House, a majority of the Democrats voted to substitute the Bland law for the Sherman law, showing that they were not in favor of unconditional repeal. If they had favored unconditional repeal, would they have voted to continue the purchase of silver, as provided by the Bland act?

In that speech I took the position which I have announced since on several occasions, namely, that I would not support for the Presidency an advocate of the gold standard. On the 26th of February, 1896, the Omaha World-Herald published an editorial written by me which covers this subject and I reproduce it for the purpose of setting forth my views, and for the further purpose of pointing out that the subsequent action of the gold standard Democrats was expected and counted upon. I have omitted the name of the paper referred to in the editorial because its side of the controversy is not given.


 * See The Philosophy of Bolting.

 ↑ Top Previous chapter Table of contents Next chapter