United States

Hanna, MarkMark Hanna, 1900Courtesy of the Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.

The Democratic convention in Chicago was unusually exciting. It was controlled by groups hostile to Cleveland’s financial policies, and it took the unprecedented step of rejecting a resolution commending the administration of a president of its own party. The debate on the party platform featured an eloquent defense of silver and agrarian interests by William Jennings Bryan, which won him not only a prolonged ovation but also his party’s presidential nomination. Bryan was a former congressman from Nebraska, and at 36 he was the youngest man ever to be the nominee for president of a major party. By experience and conviction he shared the outlook of the agrarian elements that dominated the convention and whose principal spokesman he became.

Bryan conducted a vigorous campaign. For the first time a presidential candidate carried his case to the people in all parts of the country, and for a time it appeared that he might win. The worried conservatives charged that Bryan was a dangerous demagogue, and they interpreted the campaign as a conflict between defenders of a sound economic system that would produce prosperity and dishonest radicals who championed reckless innovations that would undermine the financial security of the nation. On this interpretation they succeeded in raising large campaign funds from industrialists who feared their interests were threatened. With this money, the Republicans were able to turn the tide and win a decisive victory. Outside the South, Bryan carried only the Western silver states and Kansas and Nebraska.

Presidential campaign ribbon for William McKinley, c. 1896.Americana/Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.

Economic recovery

Soon after taking office on March 4, 1897, McKinley called Congress into special session to revise the tariff once again. Congress responded by passing the Dingley Tariff Act, which eliminated many items from the free list and generally raised duties on imports to the highest level they had yet reached.

U.S. President Grover Cleveland (centre left) and President-elect William McKinley en route to the inauguration ceremony, 1897. Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.

Although the preservation of the gold standard had been the chief appeal of the Republicans in 1896, it was not until March 1900 that Congress enacted the Gold Standard Act, which required the Treasury to maintain a minimum gold reserve of $150,000,000 and authorized the issuance of bonds, if necessary, to protect that minimum. In 1900 such a measure was almost anticlimactic, for an adequate gold supply had ceased to be a practical problem. Beginning in 1893, the production of gold in the United States had increased steadily; by 1899 the annual value of gold added to the American supply was double that of any year between 1881 and 1892. The chief source of the new supply of gold was the Klondike, where important deposits of gold had been discovered during the summer of 1896.

Klondike Gold RushMiner panning for gold in a stream during the Klondike Gold Rush in Canada.George G. Murdoch/Library and Archives Canada, Accession No. c005389

By 1898 the depression had run its course; farm prices and the volume of farm exports were again rising steadily, and Western farmers appeared to forget their recent troubles and to regain confidence in their economic prospects. In industry, the return of prosperity was marked by a resumption of the move toward more industrial combinations, despite the antitrust law; and great banking houses, such as J.P. Morgan and Company of New York, played a key role in many of the most important of these combinations by providing the necessary capital and receiving, in return, an influential voice in the management of the companies created by this capital. Harold Whitman Bradley The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica

Imperialism, the Progressive era, and the rise to world power, 1896–1920

American imperialism

The Spanish-American War

Militarily speaking, the Spanish-American War of 1898 was so brief and relatively bloodless as to have been a mere passing episode in the history of modern warfare. Its political and diplomatic consequences, however, were enormous: it catapulted the United States into the arena of world politics and set it, at least briefly, on the new road of imperialism. To be sure, specific events drove the United States to hostilities in 1898, but the stage had already been set by profound changes in thought about the nation’s mission and its destiny.