1900 William J Bryan campaign pin

Well, I guess there's nothing like killing off what little readership I have after over a week off than to post a presidential pin but ya gotta do what ya gotta do.

This one comes from the 1900 campaign of Williams Jennings Bryan who ran as a Democrat-Populist against William McKinley. Pictured on this jugate with Bryan is his running-mate, Adlai Stevenson I. McKinley won in decisive fashion but was assassinated in 1901 and succeeded by his VP Teddy Roosevelt. It serves as a nice companion piece to my McKinley-Roosevelt pin from that same year.

The paper backing gives a manufacturing date of 1896 which is curious because Bryan was also the Democratic nominee that year against McKinley. But his running mate was Arthur Sewell. I suspect that the company (Whitehead and Hoag, Newark, NJ) reused the paper backs from the 1896 buttons on these Bryan/Stevenson buttons four years later.

The turn of the century was an amazing time in America and I can't read enough about it. There is also a lot of historical fiction set in that era and I read quite a bit of that, too.