ness, especially among the Republicans, but entirely without scandal and with great increase of reputation throughout the country for courage and integrity.

Cleveland nominated Mr. Stevenson to be a judge of the Supreme Court of the District of Columbia, but the Republican Senate took revenge upon the appointee for his removal of so many Republican postmasters by refusing to confirm him.

The four years of President Harrison's term Mr. Stevenson spent at Bloomington in the practice of the law. In 1892 the Democrats chose him as a delegate-at-large from Illinois to the National Democratic Convention in Chicago. He was unanimously elected chairman of the Illinois delegation and held that important place until his own name was mentioned in the contest for Vice-President, when he withdrew from further share in the proceedings. His nomination for the Vice-Presidency and his conduct during the four years which he held that high office are still matters of recent history. Political friends and enemies agree that he was the ideal presiding officer. Dignified, urbane, unfalteringly non-partisan in his rulings, he quickly gained and infallibly held to the end the respect and esteem of all leaders. His personal appearance conduced greatly to such a success. He is six feet in height, of fine personal bearing and uniformly courteous to all.

Since March, 1897, when his term as Vice-President expired, Mr. Stevenson has continued to practice his profession at Bloomington, taking part in nearly all the legal contests in his district. He has, however, been in constant demand as a political speaker, and has contributed not a little to the debates of the time. His attitude on all the questions which the Democracy hold vital has been like his whole career, purely and absolutely Democratic.

Mr. Stevenson married, in 1866, Letitia Green of Danville, Kentucky, the daughter of the president of Center College, which Mr. Stevenson had attended as a student. They have had four children, one son and three daughters. Mrs. Stevenson, though she has spent many years at Washington, has never mingled much in society, being of a quiet and retiring temperament. She is a great-granddaughter of Joshua Fry, and has served as president of the Daughters of the American Revolution.

CHAPTER XIII.

THE KANSAS CITY CONVENTION

The Convention at Kansas City on July 5th, 1900, was unique in the history of such bodies. Both time and place had been deliberately chosen by the Democratic committee. The Republicans had gathered at Philadelphia, "the cradle of liberty," the birthplace of both the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, and there formulated a platform which both in itself and in the manner of its pronouncement was a complete rejection of those charters of our liberties. The Democrats resolved to go into the heart of the new empire of the West and there, upon the one hundred and twenty-fourth anniversary of the Declaration, reaffirm the principles of its author, who was also the founder of their party.

Nothing could have been more happily conceived to meet the temper of a people disgusted with the wanton exhibition of militarism and contempt for the law which Mr. Hanna had afforded at Philadelphia.

In some other respects the Kansas City gathering proved to be unique. In the first place, there was from the start practically no struggle over the choice of a nominee for the Presidency. That question had been settled and settled finally by the Democracy itself. Of all the delegates who convened at the Missouri river metropolis on that eventful Fourth of July only a very trifling minority lacked express instruction from their constituents to place Mr. Bryan in nomination. The great Nebraskan was the choice of the people. He was nominated at once and without dissent.

Thus it befell that the first important question to come before the convention related to the platform. Singularly enough, there were delegates present who seemed to think that Mr. Bryan could be induced to accept the nomination upon any declaration of principles to which with heart and conscience he did not wholly assent. Among these were men representing many shades of opinion upon the perennial question of policy. Representatives came from regions widely removed both by distance and by the character of their respective constituencies. There were men from the far East, familiar by daily contact with the

imperious power of the plutocracy as exemplified in every walk of life. There were Democrats of the "old school" from the far South, devoted by heredity to ancient traditions. There was the large and ever enthusiastic delegation from that great empire, the Mississippi valley. There were men from Oregon and California, from the silver States of the Rocky Mountains and from that region somewhat vaguely described as "the middle West." There were extremists, so-called (a term perhaps too often applied to men devoted to principle), and there were trimmers who may be devoted to principle, but are also devoted to successsuccess at any price.

It is no part of the policy of the Democracy to repress individual opinion. All these delegates at Kansas City had their say and the result was a tremendous and exceedingly distracting pressure upon the candidate as he sat in his home at Lincoln. Letters and telegrams poured in upon him of every tone and tenor. He was urged to "stand fast" by some and by others to make "sacrifices" for this and that. The chief bone of contention appeared to be the silver plank, because there were those who believed that if Mr. Bryan would abate even in some small degree his devotion to the principles conveyed in the Chicago platform four years ago, his chances for election would be enhanced.

It is useless to deny that such appeals would have had their effect upon many men ordinarily accounted honest and faithful to their convictions. After all, success is a great prize, perhaps even the greatest prize, in politics. But those who besought Mr. Bryan to take the path of expediency simply betrayed their ignorance of the man. Success is great; expediency is great; compromise even may be great at some junctures, but to the mind of the man who puts statesmanship above politics, country above party and humanity above country, there is something greater than any or all of these. Such a man was Mr. Jeffer son when he braved the anger, the contempt and the insults of his aristocratic relatives and neighbors in old Virginia, to stand forth as the champion of the common people. And such a man, as all now know, is William Jennings Bryan. To all appeals that he might set aside if only for a moment the smallest degree of his devotion to any part of the Chicago platform, he had but one reply: "I am not anxious enough for the nomination to purchase it by sacrificing that which I believe to be right."

Those who best knew Mr. Bryan were not at all surprised that he

should take this stand. Indeed, they would have been surprised at any other. The measure of Mr. Bryan's personal strength is the full conviction of his friends that he would gladly go down to defeat rather than abandon his convictions. If he were not such a man he could not have such friends, nor so many of them. Because he is such a man his friends are the people and their friendship is unflinching to the death.

And now among those even who doubted the wisdom of this inflexible policy there are very few who do not recognize that in thus manfully standing by his guns Mr. Bryan was also realizing the highest policy, if you please, the best politics. Bismarck used to say that his greatest triumphs in diplomacy were often won by the simplest expedient of telling the truth. So it is in politics. The schemes of the most expert trimmers are brushed away by one stroke of honesty and high principle.

Mr. Bryan would rather be right than President. He is right and he will be President.

The choice of a nominee for the Vice-Presidency developed somewhat similar elements of contempt. The so-called radical delegates entertained a preference for a candidate who should embody in his career all the principles which they held most precious. Such a candidate was offered in the person of Mr. Charles A. Towne, who had already been nominated for Vice-President at the Populist Convention in Sioux City, South Dakota. The more conservative element dreaded the effect upon the fortunes of a Democratic ticket, of nominating a man who had never in express terms proclaimed himself to be a Democrat. This element was divided in its choice between Mr. David B. Hill of New York and Mr. Adlai E. Stevenson of Illinois. The first ballot served to prove that Mr. Stevenson possessed the merit of appealing to both extreme factions. He received 599 votes at the start and, the temper of the majority being thus displayed, it was deemed wise to cast for him the unanimous ballot of the Convention; which was accordingly done without delay or dissent. Mr. Towne, who on the same day had been offered a second nomination on the ticket of the so-called Silver Republicans, refused this honor, and at once announced his intention of taking the stump for Bryan and Stevenson, thus uniting all the elements of the party with a degree of harmony perhaps unprecedented in the history of the Democracy.

CHAPTER XIV.

THE DEMOCRATIC PLATFORM OF 1900

ADOPTED AT KANSAS CITY, JULY 5, 1900.

We, the representatives of the Democratic party of the United States, assembled in national convention on the anniversary of the adoption of the Declaration of Independence, do reaffirm our faith in that immortal proclamation of the inalienable rights of man, and our allegiance to the constitution framed in harmony therewith by the fathers of the republic. We hold with the United States Supreme Court that the Declaration of Independence is the spirit of our government, of which the constitution is the form and letter. We declare again that all governments instituted among men derive their just powers from the consent of the governed; that any government not based upon the consent of the governed is a tyranny; and that to impose upon any people a government of force is to substitute the methods of imperialism for those of a republic.

CONSTITUTION FOLLOWS FLAG.

We hold that the constitution follows the flag, and denounce the doctrine that an Executive or Congress, deriving their existence and their powers from the constitution, can exercise lawful authority be yond it or in violation of it.

We assert that no nation can long endure half republic and half empire, and we warn the American people that imperialism abroad will lead quickly and inevitably to despotism at home.

CONDEMNS PORTO RICAN LAW.

Believing in these fundamental principles, we denounce the Porto Rico law, enacted by a Republican Congress against the protest and opposition of the Democratic minority, as a bold and open violation of the nation's organic law and a flagrant breach of the national good faith. It imposes upon the people of Porto Rico a government without their consent and taxation without representation.