SOURCE: “Bryan the Orator,” in Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society, Vol. LIII, No. 3, Autumn, 1960, pp. 266-82.

In the following essay, House praises Bryan's talents for oratory.

How great an orator was William Jennings Bryan?¹

He was probably the greatest the nation has ever seen. No other ever drew such crowds. Probably no other made so many speeches. And he stirred his hearers not on one or two occasions but times almost without number.

His most famous speech was delivered in Chicago in 1896, the “Cross of Gold” oration which stampeded the convention and made him the Democratic presidential nominee at the age of thirty-six. The historian Gerald W. Johnson declared that this address established Bryan “at once as the greatest master of the platform in American politics.”²

But even before that masterpiece, Bryan had gained wide recognition as a speaker of power. Early, he was called “the...