alternatehistory.com

I'll add footnotes tomorrow but here's the next epilogue post!

Epilogue Post #3

The Second Coming:
The large crowd of nearly fifteen thousand jostled each other to get a better look at the speaker. He did not have the boyish looks he had two decades ago. His hairline had receded beyond the crest of his head, leaving the January sun gleaming off his bald head. Wrinkles crawled their way across cheeks. His eyebrows were bushier and the hair above his ears stuck out haphazaardly. But aging from forty to sixty would do that to any man. One thing, however, had not changed with age. Below those bushy eyebrows, the same fiery gaze wandered over the assembled Demoinians that had inhabited those eyes in 1896 and 1900. William Jennings Bryan clutched the podium as he leaned into the microphone.

"Two decades ago, I had the grandest opportunity afforded any man in these great United States of ours. I had the opportunity to serve you all as your President. Thrust into the spotlight of the presidency as I was, I did my utmost to guide this nation as you the people of this great land saw fit. In those two years, there were both successes and failures. In my youth, I admit I made mistakes. I paid dearly for those mistakes as you, the American people, saw me unfit to govern you and cast me out. I hold no grudge for that action."

Bryan began the momentous speech with a great show of humility. In accepting that his youth and inexperience had led to mistakes, the former president evoked the spirit of humility that had supposedly inhabited George Washington. As Bryan's speech continued, the fire in his speech roared to match the fire in his eyes. He railed against the imperialist policies of Presidents McKinley, Roosevelt, Warfield, and Oliver. He called out the Progressive Party for betraying its populist roots and veering toward the spectre of centralizing socialism. At last, in his speech's final words, William Jennings Bryan fell back on the old canard that had helped propel him to the presidency once before - gold. "I carried the burden of the working man with me to the White House. Twenty years ago, the bankers and trusts of this nation did crucify me upon their cross of gold. But let this be known! I have been entombed for long enough. Now I rise again, and I shall continue the fight for the people that build this nation, the working man of America! I come before you a wiser man than I once was, and with your help we shall return this country to the hill our shining city was founded upon!"

The speech held in the Demoine capital of Waterloo would launch one of the greatest political comebacks in American history. The famous "cross of gold" speech was soon wired throughout the nation, launching William Jennings Bryan's 1920 presidential candidacy. Bryan, now sixty years old, threw himself into the campaign with the same vigor he had shown during his first runs for office. While Bryan himself criss crossed the country multiple times during his campaign in 1920, he also had the help of a pioneer in the emerging radio and film technologies. In 1915 when Bryan was in Washington for activities with the American Anti-Imperialist League, he met radio pioneer Lee DeForest, who was then working at the Tesla Technological Institute as a radio operator in Fort Reno. DeForest and Bryan became quick friends and years later, after DeForest found private success in Milwaukee with the DeForest Radio Company, Bryan sought out DeForest to help manage his presidential campaign. With DeForest utilizing the pioneering national radio broadcasts and an innovative way to reproduce sound on the same film used for the picture, Bryan's 1920 campaign embraced both the energy of Bryan's whistlestop tours and the emerging new media to bring the campaign directly to the American public.

Bryan used his innovative campaign to easily outfox his contenders for the Republican nomination. Bryan's major competition for the Republican nomination were New Jersey Senator Joseph Freylinghuysen Jr. and John Weeks of Massachusetts. Bryan leveraged his experience of being a former president with being the only Westerner in the Republican race to great success, even in the urban areas of the Confluence region. At the Republican National Convention in Indianapolis, Bryan reiterated the Cross of Gold speech during his acceptance of the nomination. For a second time, William Jennings Bryan ran the presidency leading a Republican ticket. And for a second time, he would win.

The 1920 election was not quite as dramatic as many popular historians have made it appear. The nomination of governor Sidney Johnston Catts of Florida by the Democratic Party, in many ways Furnifold Simmons' ultimate revenge on Edwin Warfield and George Oliver, saw the Democratic Party quickly removed from the picture in many states outside the South. The nomination of Catts, while appealing to the nativist sentiment that grew in the United States during the 1910s, actually did more to help Bryan than it did the Democrats. Standing next to Catts' wild theories about the Pueblan Papacy, including a plot which Theodore Roosevelt was supposedly complicit in to incite a general takeover of the United States from Cuba and the California District, William Jennings Bryan appeared downright saintly. Former President Bryan still played up his appeal to "maintaining the society that has allowed America to prosper", but was more subtle. For instance, Bryan was able to weave his anti-imperialist rhetoric with his religious fervor in calling for a restoration of Californian independence, "righting the unjust invasion by President Roosevelt" while subtly insinuating that Californios would dilute the character of the United States.

The broad appeal in the heartland of the country allowed Bryan to outmaneuver Progressive candidate Amos Pinchot. Pinchot had already been weakened after a bitter primary to fend off Herbert Hoover for the Progressive nomination, and the selection of Champoeg's Willis C. Hawley as Pinchot's running mate did not help matters. After a lacklustre campaign from both the Democrats and the Progressives, William Jennings Bryan returned triumphantly to the White House with a comfortable 279 electoral votes. Catts was also hurt by the presence of the Cuban Partido Liberal, which like the Conservadores in 1912 nominated a national candidate for president. The Liberales nominated Cuban governor Alfredo Zayas y Alfonso with running mate businessman and cigar magnate Carlos A. Ybor of Jackson. With the extreme anti-Catholicism from the Democrats, the Liberals won not only Cuba but the state of Jackson as well. In this, the 1920 election also solidifed the separate party system in Cuba, with the Conservadores and the Liberales becoming the two main parties in the state.