But he was defeated by a plurality of about 156,000.
The fall elections of 1894, indeed, made havoc in the Democratic
party. In twenty-four States, the Democrats failed to return a
single member, and in each of six others, only a single district
failed to elect a Republican. The Republican majority in the
House was 140, and the Republican party also gained control of
the Senate. The Democrats who had swept the country two years
before were now completely routed.
Under the peculiar American system which allows a defeated party
to carry on its work for another session of Congress as if
nothing had happened, the Democratic party remained in actual
possession of Congress for some months but could do nothing to
better its record. The leading occupation of its members now
seemed to be the advocacy of free silver and the denunciation of
President Cleveland. William J. Bryan of Nebraska was then
displaying in the House the oratorical accomplishments and
dauntless energy of character which soon thereafter gained him
the party leadership. With prolific rhetoric, he likened
President Cleveland to a guardian who had squandered the estate
of a confiding ward and to a trainman who opened a switch and
caused a wreck, and he declared that the President in trying to
inoculate the Democratic party with Republican virus had poisoned
its blood.
Shortly after the last Democratic Congress--the last for many
years--the Supreme Court undid one of the few successful
achievements of this party when it was in power.
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