Few Surprises.

The Democrats gathered in Kansas City on 4 July, and to no one's surprise they nominated the charismatic William Jennings Bryan, who had been their candidate four years earlier, on the first ballot. As his running mate they chose Adlai E. Stevenson of Illinois, who had been vice president during Grover Cleveland's second term and who shared Bryan's belief that the nation should abandon the gold standard for silver. The only suspense at the convention pertained to which issue would be given greater weight in the party platform: an attack on expansionism or a restatement of the 1896 pledge to free coinage of silver. The debate was short, and expansionism won out. Attacking the foreign policies of the McKinley administration, the Democrats declared that "imperialism growing out of the Spanish war, involves the very existence of the Republic, and the destruction...