Theodore Roosevelt said of William Jennings Bryan, “By George, he would make the greatest Baptist preacher on earth.” A Baptist preacher he might have been, too, were it not for his boyhood fear of water. As a young boy in the 1860s in Salem, Illinois (the same small town in John Scopes studied high school biology), Bryan dreamed of becoming a preacher in the Baptist Church of his father. Witnessing his first baptismal immersion at age six, however, changed his career plans. Bryan later claimed that his fear of water was so great that it led to his decision to leave the Baptist Church and become a Presbyterian at age fourteen.
Bryan said, “My early life ran quiet as a brook.” He enjoyed books and outdoor sports. “The pleasantest memory of my boyhood,” he said, “is that of my mother, who taught me until I was ten years of age.” Bryan excelled in school, and graduated as the valedictorian and class orator from Illinois College. He married a college sweetheart, Mary E. Baird, during his first year at the Union College of Law in Chicago. Six years later, the young lawyer and his wife moved to a place Bryan saw as the land of opportunity, Nebraska.
In 1890, just three years after settling in Nebraska, “the Boy Orator of the Platte” launched a political career that in six short years would win him the Democratic Party's nomination for President. His election to Congress came as a surprise; he became the first Democratic congressman in Nebraska's twenty years of statehood. After two terms in Congress, Bryan became editor of the Omaha World-Herald and traveled the Chautauqua lecture circuit promoting populist ideas. In 1896, Bryan spoke on one of his favorite populist issues, free silver, at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago. He championed the idea that the dollar should be backed by more plentiful silver rather than gold, as was the present U. S. policy. His speech—characterized, like so many of his speeches, by a religious quality—for a monetary policy more favorable for debtors ended with the memorable words, “You shall not press down upon the brow of labor this crown of thorns; you shall not crucify mankind upon a cross of gold.” Tumultuous applause erupted on the convention floor and continued for thirty minutes. Five ballots later, the thirty-six-year-old Nebraskan became the youngest person ever nominated for the presidency. He lost in November to Republican William McKinley, receiving 47 percent of the vote to McKinley's 51. The national ticket took down with it many Democratic candidates for Congress, including a young man from Illinois named Clarence Darrow, who lost his race by a mere 100 votes.
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