This sketch of William Jennings Bryan appeared in the Duluth Herald on October 1, 1900. (Image: Duluth Public Library.)
On this day in Duluth in 1900, Democratic presidential nominee William Jennings Bryan addressed a crowd of 5,000 at the Armory at Second Avenue East on First Street. The Democratic-leaning Duluth Herald provided extension coverage of Bryan’s visit to Duluth and praised his orations while the Republican-leaning News Tribune’s coverage included editorials criticizing his remarks.While the Duluth Herald described the crowd as “the largest the Armory has ever held,” the Duluth News Tribune pointed out that Bryan had attracted a larger crowd at the Duluth Street Railway Company’s barns four years earlier, when he ran unsuccessfully against William McKinley. Bryan had arrived in the Zenith City the previous day on his private train car, “the Rambler,” pulled by a Northern Pacific train. While in Duluth he was a guest at the home of Duluth Senator Charles O. Baldwin, and since he arrived on a Sunday, together they attended services at Pilgrim Congregational Church before enjoying a carriage ride on the Boulevard, today’s Skyline Parkway. Before addressing the Armory crowd on October first, he gave speeches to 4,000 people in Superior and another large gathering in West Duluth. Once again Bryan lost the election to William McKinley. He was later Woodrow Wilson’s Secretary of State for a time and famously attacked Darwin’s Theory of Evolution in the 1925 Scopes “Monkey” Trial (he died in his sleep five days after the trial ended). Read some of the local coverage here.
