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President
William McKinley
Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division [reproduction number,
e.g., LC-USZ62-110212]
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Questions to consider
1. Why was the 1896
election so bitterly fought?
2. Why was the issue of the Gold Standard so important in late nineteenth
century American politics?
3. What did "Populism" stand for?
4. In what way did Populists and Republicans each try to justify their
positions in relation to the founding fathers, or the ideals of the republic
and who had the better case?
5. Why have historians disagreed so much on what progressivism really
was?
6. What did the progressives actually achieve?
Primary sources
McKinley campaign song (1896)
People's Party Omaha Platform 1892
Why I Became a Populist, by Lorenzo Lewelling
New York Times on the 1896 election
Bryan's "Cross of Gold" speech
Account of speech
of "Pitchfork" Ben Tillman
Excerpt from "Coin" Harvey's "Coin's Financial School" (1894)
Jane
Addams, "First Days at Hull-House," 1910
Introductory readings
Lichenstein, Strasser, Rosenweig, Who Built America? Vol.
2, chapter 3, "The Ruling Classes and the Money Power" [Note:
there are multiple copies of this textbook in the UCL library]
Extracts by Nell Irvin Painter and Michael Kazin in Leon Fink, ed.,
Major Problems in the Gilded Age and the Porgressive Era, pp. 201-224
Nell Irvin Painter, "Depression of the 1890s", from Standing
at Armageddon: The United States, 1877-1919, TEACHING
COLLECTION MAIN 3334
Ian Tyrell, "Building the Nation-State in the Progressive Era", in Transnational
Nation: The United States in Global Perspective (2007), pp. 118-133.
Charles
Postel, "Introduction",
from The Populist Vision (2007)
Further
reading
Populism
David
B. Parker, 'The Rise and Fall of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz as
a "Parable
on Populism"'
Journal of the Georgia Association of Historians 15 (1994): 49-63.
Henry
M. Littlefield, "The Wizard of Oz: Parable on Populism", American
Quarterly, 16:1 (1964): 47-58
Edward Ayers, The Promise of the New South, ch. 10.
Michael Kazin, The Populist Persuasion, intro and ch. 2.
Robert C. McMath, Jr., American Populism: A Social History, 1877-1898 (1993)
Richard Hofstadter, The Age of Reform: From Bryan to FDR (1955),
chapters 1-3
Lawrence Goodwyn, The Populist Moment (1978)
Stanley B. Parsons and
others, "The Role of Cooperatives in the Development
of the Movement Culture of Populism", Journal of American
History , 69:4 (1983): 866-885 [critique of Goodwyn]
C. Vann Woodward, "The Populist Heritage and the Intellectual" in
The Burden of Southern History (1968)
Peter H. Argersinger, The Limits of American Radicalism: Western
Populism and American Politics (1995), chapters 5-7
Richard Hofstadter, "Free Silver and the mind of 'coin' Harvey",
in The Paranoid Style in American Politics and other essays (1952)
Gretchen Ritter, Goldbugs and greenbacks: antimonopoly tradition
and the politics of finance in America, 1865-96 (1997), chapters
1, 2, 5, 6
Progressivism
Peter
Filene, "An Obituary for 'the Progressive Movement", American
Quarterly 22:1 (1970): 20-34
Richard
L. McCormick, "The Discovery that Business Corrupts Politics: A
Reappraisal of the Origins of Progressivism", American Historical
Review 86:2
(1981): 247-274
Daniel
T. Rodgers, "In Search
of Progressivism", Reviews in American
History 10:4 (1982): 113-132
David Traxel, Crusader Nation (2006)
Alan Dawley, Struggles
for Justice: Social Responsibility and the Liberal State (1991)
John Milton Cooper, Pivotal Decades: The US 1900-1920 (1990)
Lewis L. Gould, Reform
and Regulation: American Politics, 1900-1916 (1978)
Otis L. Graham, The Great Campaigns: Reform and War in America, 1900-1928 (1971),
Parts 1 and 3
John W.Chambers, The Tyranny of Change: America in the Progressive Era 1890-1920 (1992)
Richard Hofstadter, The Age of Reform (1955), chapters 4-6
Gabriel Kolko, The Triumph of Conservatism, 1900-1916 (1963)
Robert H. Wiebe, The Search for Order, 1877-1920 (1967)
Electoral politics
Michael E. McGerr, The Decline of Popular Politics:
The American North, 1865-1928 (1986)
Richard Jensen, The Winning of the Midwest, 1888-1896 (1971)
Samuel T, McSeveney, The Politics of Depression: Political Behavior in the
Northeast, 1893-96 (1972)
R. Hal Williams, Years of Decision: American Politics in the 1890s (1978)
Robert Durden, The Climax of Populism: The Election of 1896 (1966)
Stanley L. Jones, The Presidential Election of 1896 (1964)
Websites
[Links
to Progessive Era resources]
America
in the 1890s
Vassar
College website on the 1896 Election
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