ABSTRACT
The election of 1900 was a rematch of the 1896 contest, pitting William McKinley against William Jennings Bryan. When they met in Kansas City for their national convention, the Democrats picked as their vice presidential nominee Adlai Stevenson of Illinois, a silverite who had served as vice president during Cleveland’s second term. The Republican convention, held in Philadelphia, nominated a reluctant Roosevelt, who said he would be a “dignified nonentity for four years”. Two years earlier, the United States had fought a brief war with Spain and had acquired the Philippines, Puerto Rico, and Guam as colonies. Although Bryan tried once again to invoke the magical charm of silver, by 1900 it was a dead issue. His insistence on supporting free silver divided the Democratic Party and hurt him in the East, for it drove many anti-imperialists there—who otherwise would have supported him—into McKinley’s arms.
