Harriet Beech Stowe’s excerpt (Ch. 9)
The Emancipation Proclamation
The Gettysburg Address
Announcements
- Inside Washington Seminar
- Discussion Post #7 due Friday, 10/17, 11:07pm
Plan for the Day
- Inspiration from the Braver Angels Dialogue on AI advancing society
- Social Construction of Technology
- Protections around technology
- Ethics Boards for using the tool
- NATO-like group to police “good” use of AI
- Industry limiting use of AI (mainly for children)
- Other “dangerous” technologies we freely use
- Replication of power structures…who actually controls nuclear proliferation?
- Was the American Revolution really the beginning of the Civil War?
- Causes of the American Civil War
- Harriet Beecher Stowe’s “In Which it Appears that a Senator is but a Man” from Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1852)
- The Emancipation Proclamation
- The Gettysburg Address
- William Jennings Bryan’s The Cross of Gold Speech
- Democracy/Liberty/Freedom/ETC. quotation:
“The ‘wealthification’ of politics has become a major problem in U.S. democracy, due, in part, to weakened campaign finance laws, allowing the ultra-rich to exert outsized influence on elections through massive, often undisclosed contributions.”
–Darrell M. West and Kathryn Dunn Tenpas, 10 April 2025. [Podcast]
Does more money mean more influence? Haven’t there been plenty of times in American history where people had more influence than others?
Civil War Readings (from Tuesday)
Let’s jump on back to Tuesday’s (10/21) class webpage to finish up the Civil War readings.
A History of Money
Well, a history of money is well outside the scope of this course, but I do want to get you thinking about money before discussing William Jennings Bryan’s “The Cross of Gold” speech.
- What exactly is money?
- What makes money valuable (or not valuable)?
- Who/What determines value?
Here are some important types of money and their definitions:
- bartering: directly exchanging goods and services for other goods and services
- This house costs ten (10) steers, twenty-five (25) chickens, and your digging irrigation ditches for my crops.
- commodity money: coins that have a medium of exchange like precious metals in them, usually gold or silver.
- representative money: currency backed by a precious metal (US Gold Standard until 1971) that has a face value that can be exchanged for a commodity.
- fiat money: is currency back by the authority of a governing body.
- This is USD, EURO, Pound Sterling, etc.
Free Silver vs the Gold Standard
During the 1890s, there was a depression known as The Panic of 1893 and The Panic of 1896. This actually has roots in the Civil War and post-Civil War policies. War costs money, and the US government needed to raise money. It had a lower tax base because of Southern Sucession. Before the Civil War, gold and silver coins (commodity money) were used as official currency.
In order to raise money, the United States issued Greenbacks (fiat money), which could eventually be exchanged for gold or silver. The value of Greenbacks fluctuated with how well the North was doing in the Civil War: when things looked bad, their value fell; when things looked good the value rose. At the end of the war, Greenbacks increased in value, but their exchange rate didn’t match the value of gold until 1878, and then they could be exchanged for gold. This stablization was helped by The Resumption Act of 1875, which restored the gold standard.
Today, we don’t like inflation: when prices go up, we have less buying power. Putting the US back on the gold standard deflated currency, which hurt those paying off debt. If you have a $10,000 loan and inflation goes up, essentially your loan drops because your currency can pay off more of the debt. If currency deflates, your currency is worth less, but your loan amount stays the same. Consider what the phrase “money is cheap (or expensive) now” means.
In the 1890s, deflation was hurting farmers and workers, spurring a populist party (The People’s Party) to form, and one of it’s main platforms was free silver, which meant the unlimited coinage of silver. Silver was to have a direct exchange rate to gold, but this meant the money supply would increase, thus, increasing inflation. Farmers wanted inflation to increase their prices; debtors wanted inflation to lower their debts. These groups were in the West and South. Those opposed–wealthy Northeastern bankers–wanted to have a true gold standard. The depression(s) of the 1890s affected politics, and the free silver movement was championed by populist Democrats who nominated William Jennings Bryan for President in 1896 and 1900 (also in 1908).
Question: Why would farmers in particular want inflation to raise prices?
Think of this as the reverse of why debtors want inflation.
The Cross of Gold Speech
William Jennings Bryan was an amazing orator but seen as a radical. He was liked and hated, but his support was mainly in the (now) less populated South. In the 1896 Presidential Election, Bryan lost by around 600,000 votes, and we should compare the Electoral College of 1896 with that of 2024 for some perspective. Notice the population difference but also the “voting” blocks of the two different eras.
Bryan’s “Cross of Gold Speech” is a powerful oratory that on face seems like simply an issue about monetary policy, but it is an anti-elitist, anti-moneyed interest, pro-Southern, pro-common person coalition-building call. He would eventually fall out of favor with the Democratic Party establishment, which kept him out of running for president afte 1908, but he still was appointed as Secretary of State by Woddraw Wilson (he resigned when the US started to intervene in events of World War I).
But let’s concern ourselves with the speech. To whom is he speaking? Sure, the Democratic Convention, but his message is also for whom?
- para. 1: “‘The humblest citizen in all the land, when clad in armor of a righteous cause, is stronger than all the whole hosts of error that they can bring.'”
- “I come to speak to you in defense of a cause as holy as the cause of liberty—the cause of humanity.”
- “The individual is but an atom; he is born, he acts, he dies but principles are eternal; and this has been a contest of principle.”
- tricolon repetition
- para. 2: Notice the gravity Bryan sets.
- “Never before in the history of this country has there been witnessed such a contest as that through which we have passed.”
- “Never before in the history of American politics has a great issue been fought out, as this issue has been, by the voters themselves.”
- para. 3: “…the silver Democrats…” are victorious
- “…the zeal which inspired the crusaders who followed PETER the Hermit…”
- “Our silver Democrats…are assembled now, not to discuss, not to debate, but to enter up the judgment rendered by the plain people of this country.”
- para. 4: Notice how he speaks about northeastern “businessmen” even though he claims, “we say not one word against those who live upon the Atlantic coast…”
- “…those hardy pioneers who braved all the dangers of the wilderness, who have made the desert to blossom as the rose—those pioneers away out there, rearing their children near to nature’s heart, where they can mingle their voices with the voices of the birds—out there where they have erected school houses for the education of their children and churches where they praise their Creator, and the cemeteries where sleep the ashes of their dead—are as deserving of the consideration of this party as any people in this country.”
- para. 6: Notice this repetition
- “We beg no longer; we entreat no more; we petition no more. We defy them!”
- para. 7: On future Amendment XVI (16)
- “The income tax is a just law. It simply intends to put the burdens of government justly upon the backs of the people. I am in favor of an income tax. When I find a man who is not willing to pay his share of the burden of the government which protects him I find a man who is unworthy to enjoy the blessings of a government like ours.
- para. 8: “I stand with JEFFERSON….the issue of money is a function of the Government, and that the banks should go out of the governing business.”
- Who stands to gain if banks issue money?
- What would bank-issued currency risk?
- para. 9: Incumbents…
- “What we oppose in that plank is the life tenure that is being built up in Washington which establishes an office-holding class and excludes from participation in the benefits the humbler members of our society.”
- para. 10: “…the gold standard has slain its tens of thousands.”
- “…when we have restored the money of the constitution all other necessary reforms will be possible, and that until that is done there is no reforms will be possible, and that until that is done there is no reform that can be accomplished.”
- Great repetition
- para. 11: Interesting use of rhetorical questions (notice the strategy of course you know this…)
- “Why this change?”
- “Ah, my friends, is not the change evident to anyone who will look at the matter?”
- Why might the gold standard leave the US open to foreign intervention?
- “fastening the gold standard upon this people…willing to surrender the right of self-government and place legislative control in the hands of foreign potentates and powers.”
- para. 14: “Here is the line of battle. We care not upon which issue they force the fight. We are prepared to meet them on either issue or on both.”
- “…they will search the pages of history in vain to find a single instance in which the common people of any land ever declared themselves in favor of a gold standard. They can find where the holders of fixed investments have.”
- the common people vs the elite moneyed interests
- para. 15: Say no to trickle down but yes to trickle up
- “There are those who believe that if you just legislate to make the well-to-do prosperous that their prosperity will leak through on those below. The Democratic idea has been that if you legislate to make the masses prosperous their prosperity will find its way up and through every class that rests upon it.”
- para. 16: Climactic rise to the speech just before the “mic drop”
- “Burn down your cities and leave our farms, and your cities will spring up again as if by magic. But destroy our farms and the grass will grow in the streets of every city in this country.”
- para. 17: Nationalism?
- “My friends, we shall declare that this nation is able to legislate for its own people on every question, without waiting for the aid or consent of any other nation on earth, and upon that issue we expect to carry every single State in this Union.”
- para. 18: Bombastic ending…we have behind us:
- “the producing masses”
- “the commercial interests”
- “the laboring interests”
- “all the toiling masses”
- “…you shall not press down upon the brow of labor this crown of thorns. You shall not crucify mankind upon a cross of gold.”
By the way, the speech I linked to is a slightly shorter version of the original.
Next Class
Let’s see if we got through covering Harriet Beecher Stowe’s excerpt from Uncle Tom’s Cabin, Abraham Lincoln’s “The Emancipation Proclamation” (1863), and his “The Gettysburg Address” (19 Nov 1863). We’ll move onto William Jennings Bryan’s The Cross of Gold Speech on Thursday, 10/23. There’s an argument to be made that Bryan’s populist party is a response to the treatment of soldiers as well as laborers as expendable…we’ll discuss. Don’t forget to do Weekly Discussion Post #7 before Friday, 10/24, 11:07pm.
Works Cited
West, Darrell M. and Kathryn Dunn Tenpas. “Can Billionaires Buy Democracy?” Brookings, 10 April 2025, https://www.brookings.edu/articles/can-billionaires-buy-democracy/.