SOURCE: “Above the World: William Jennings Bryan's View of the American Nation,” in International Affairs, in Nebraska History, Vol. 61, No. 2, Summer, 1980, pp. 153-71.

In the following essay, Ogle attempts to explain Bryan's “Americanism”—his belief in the uniqueness of the United States as a purely Christian and democratic nation—and his political philosophy.

Twenty-nine years and one day after his tumultuous “Cross of Gold” speech, William Jennings Bryan took his place with the counsel for the prosecution in Dayton, Tennessee. There, as on that scorching day in Chicago three presidential candidacies and three long decades earlier, Bryan engaged in an allegorical “duel to the death.” The golden-tongued orator did not rise to battle against John T. Scopes or William McKinley but to fight for an America that would stand up and be counted against Britain and the Old World for “national character … and national independence” which were being...