United States presidential election, 1900

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Presidential electoral votes by state.

The U.S. presidential election of 1900 was held on November 6, 1900. It was a rematch of the 1896 race between Republican President William McKinley and his Democratic challenger, William Jennings Bryan. The return of economic prosperity and recent victory in the Spanish-American War helped McKinley to score a decisive victory.

[edit] Nominations

Republican campaign poster, 1900

[edit] Republican Party nomination

The 926 Republican delegates to the Republican convention in Philadelphia renominated William McKinley by acclamation. New York state party leaders pressured McKinley to pick a reluctant Theodore Roosevelt, governor of New York as the Vice Presidential nominee, replacing Garret A. Hobart, who died in 1899.

[edit] Democratic Party nomination

William Jennings Bryan was easily renominated at the 1900 Democratic National Convention in Kansas City, garnering 936 delegate votes. Former Vice President Adlai Stevenson was nominated for the office again, beating out David B. Hill, Abram W. Patrick, and Julian S. Carr for the nomination.

[edit] Other nominations

The Populist Party, which four years earlier had supported Bryan, this time went their own way, nominating a ticket of Wharton Barker and Ignatius L. Donnelly. Eugene Debs made his first bid for president in 1900 as the candidate of the Social Democratic Party.

[edit] General election

McKinley campaigns on gold coin (gold standard) with support from soldiers, businessmen, farmers and professionals, claiming to restore prosperity at home and victory abroad

[edit] Campaign

The economy was booming in 1900, so the Republican slogan of “Four More Years of the Full Dinner Pail”, combined with victory in foreign war, had a powerful electoral appeal. Roosevelt emphasized the war issue:^[1]

Four years ago the nation was uneasy because at our very doors an American island was writhing in hideous agony under a worse than medieval despotism. We had our Armenia at our threshold. The situation in Cuba had become such that we could no longer stand quiet and retain one shred of self-respect…. We drew the sword and waged the most righteous and brilliantly successful foreign war that this generation has seen.

Bryan campaigned with a reprise of his major issue from the 1896 campaign, free silver. It was not as successful in 1900 because of the improved economy and because gold was being inflated by new production from Alaska and South Africa. Bryan's second major campaign theme attacked McKinley's imperialism and his efforts to put down the insurrection in the Philippines. This theme won over some previous opponents, especially "hard money" Germans, former Gold Democrats, and anti-imperialists such as Andrew Carnegie.

Bryan also attempted, with limited success, to run against the McKinley administration's “imperialism” and problems in the conduct of the Spanish-American and Philippine-American Wars.

Both candidates repeated their 1896 campaign techniques, with McKinley again on his front porch; at its peak, he greeted sixteen delegations and 30,000 cheering supporters in one day. Meanwhile Bryan took to the rails again, traveling 18,000 miles to hundreds of rallies across the Midwest and East. This time, he was matched by Theodore Roosevelt, governor of New York, who campaigned just as energetically in 24 states, covering 21,000 miles by train.

[edit] Philippine War claims

Conservatives ridiculed Bryan's eclectic platform

The triumph of the American army and navy in the war against Spain was a decisive factor in building Republican support. Democrats tried to argue that the war was not over because of the insurgency in the Philippines, which became their major issue. A perception that the Philippine War was coming to an end would be an electoral asset for the Republicans, and the McKinley administration stated that there were reductions of troops there. Republicans pledged that the fighting in the Philippines would die down of its own accord within sixty days of McKinley's reelection.^[2] However, as one lieutenant explained in a letter to his wife, “It looks good on paper, but there really has been no reduction of the force here. These battalions [being sent home] are made up on men…about to be discharged.”^[3]

In addition, Secretary of War Elihu Root had MacArthur's September 1900 report which he did not release until after the election.^[4] General Arthur MacArthur had been in command of the Philippines for four months, warning Washington that the war was not lessening and that the end was not even in sight. MacArthur believed that the guerrilla stage of the war was just beginning and that Filipinos were refining their techniques through experience. Furthermore, Philippine leader Emilio Aguinaldo’s strategy had popular support. MacArthur wrote:

The success of this unique system of war depends upon almost complete unity of action of the entire native population. That such unity is a fact is too obvious to admit of discussion; how it is brought about and maintained is not so plain. Intimidation has undoubtedly accomplished much to this end, but fear as the only motive is hardly sufficient to account for the united and apparently spontaneous action of several millions of people. One traitor in each town would eventually destroy such a complex organization. It is more probable that the adhesive principle comes from ethological homogeneity, which induces men to respond for a time to the appeals of consanguineous leadership even when such action is opposed to their interests and convictions of expediency.^[5]

[edit] Soldier vote

Nonetheless, the majority of soldiers in the Philippines did not support Bryan. Any mention of the election of 1900 in the soldiers' letters and diaries indicated overwhelming support for the Republican ticket of McKinley and Roosevelt. According to Sergeant Beverly Daley, even the “howling Democrats” favored McKinley. Private Hambleton wrote, “Of course, there are some boys who think Bryan is the whole cheese, but they don't say too much.”^[6]

[edit] Results

Source (Popular Vote): Leip, David. 1900 Presidential Election Results. Dave Leip's Atlas of U.S. Presidential Elections (July 28, 2005).

Source (Electoral Vote): Electoral College Box Scores 1789–1996. Official website of the National Archives. (July 31, 2005).

[edit] See also

• History of the United States (1865–1918)

[edit] References

• Bailey, John W., Jr. "The Presidential Election of 1900 in Nebraska: McKinley over Bryan" Nebraska History 1973 54(4): 561-584. ISSN 0028-1859 Bryan lost his home state.
• Bailey, Thomas A. (1937). "Was the Presidential Election of 1900 a Mandate on Imperialism?". Mississippi Valley Historical Review: 43-52. 
• Coletta, Paolo E. (1964). William Jennings Bryan, vol. 1, University of Nebraska Press. 
• Lewis L. Gould, The Presidency of William McKinley (1980)
• Fred H. Harrington, "The Anti-Imperialist Movement in the United States, 1898-1900" in Mississippi Valley Historical Review, Vol. 22, No. 2 (Sep., 1935) , pp. 211-230 in JSTOR
• Miller, Stuart Creighton (1982). Benevolent Assimilation: The American Conquest of the Philippines, 1899–1903. Yale University Press. ISBN 0-300-03081-9. 
• H. Wayne Morgan. "William McKinley as a Political Leader" Review of Politics, Vol. 28, No. 4 (Oct., 1966) , pp. 417-432 in JSTOR
• H. Wayne Morgan. William McKinley and His America (1963)
• Kent, Noel Jacob (2002). America in 1900. 
• Schlup, Leonard. "The American Chameleon: Adlai E. Stevenson and the Quest for the Vice Presidency in Gilded Age Politics." Presidential Studies Quarterly 1991 21(3): 511-529. ISSN 0360-4918
• Schlup, Leonard. "In the Shadow of Bryan: Adlai E. Stevenson and the Resurgence of Conservatism at the 1900 Convention." Nebraska History 1986 67(3): 224-238. ISSN 0028-1859
• Tompkins, E. Berkeley. "Scilla and Charybdis: the Anti-imperialist Dilemma in the Election of 1900" Pacific Historical Review 1967 36(2): 143-161. ISSN 0030-8684

[edit] Notes

1. ^ [Brands 1997: 400]
2. ^ [Miller 1982: 143]; Detroit Evening News, September 7, 1900; San Francisco Call, September 8, 21, 1900; Boston Evening Transcript, September 20, 1900
3. ^ [Miller 1982: 148]; Lt. Samuel Powell Lyon to his wife, April 12, 1900, Carlisle Collection
4. ^ [Miller 1982: 143, 148]
5. ^ [Miller 1982: 150–151]; Literary Digest 21 (1900): 605–606
6. ^ [Miller 1982: 187]; Letters of Sergeant Beverly Daley, November 16, 1900, Private Hambleton, March 4, 1900.

[edit] External links

• 1900 popular vote by counties
• 1900 State-by-state Popular vote

[edit] Navigation