"WE WANT YER, MCKINLEY": EPIDEICTIC RHETORIC IN SONGS FROM THE 1896 PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN

Abstract. The 1896 presidential campaign included, among many other campaign techniques, a large number of songs that praised and condemned the opposing candidates, William McKinley and William Jennings Bryan. The campaign songs, whose likely purpose was to inspire the candidates' followers, were epideictic in tone and spirit. By presenting a rhetoric that paralleled epideictic speeches, the songs enabled the opposing candidates themselves to uphold a sense of their own decorum. The songs used values as rhetorical devices; however, the songs' purpose was to gain a practical political end rather than to uphold moral principles.

Political songs, often exuberant and scathing, promoted the candidates in the 1896 campaign for President of the United States, one of the hardest-fought in United States history. This campaign featured William Jennings Bryan's famous speech, "Cross of Gold" ("Bryan's Great Speech"; Harpine, "Bryan's"), not to mention McKinley's notably successful front porch campaign (see Trent & Friedenberg 78; Tindall and Shi 1026; Harpine, "Playing"). The campaign songs, which were presumably calculated to bolster the enthusiasm of the respective candidates' supporters, were epideictic in tone and spirit. That is, the songs' rhetorical strategies paralleled those of epideictic speeches. Yet there is a subtle divergence. An epideictic speaker might say, "Let us praise our departed hero, and live our own lives in accordance with the values for which our hero lived." The political songs employ epideictic methods, but the line of thought is more like "Our candidate supports our values, so vote for our candidate." In other words, the usual epideictic speech inculcates values, while these political songs employed values as topoi for a purpose more typical of deliberative speech.

The songs offered a forum for the kind of praise and invective that decorum might prevent Bryan and McKinley from presenting themselves. Bryan rarely indulged in personal attacks, while McKinley studiously avoided direct criticisms of his opponent. A candidate might wish to seem above the fray, to appear presidential. Earlier in the century, presidential candidates sometimes furthered this goal by studiously refusing to campaign. During the mid- and late-nineteenth century, several candidates, including William Henry Harrison and Grover Cleveland, did campaign actively for the presidency (Jamieson 9-15; Socolofsky and Spelter 11-12). Even as late as 1896, however, vestiges of the notion that the office seeks the candidate remained in a concept of presidential decorum. Like Benjamin Harrison and Garfield before him, McKinley campaigned from his home by giving speeches to visiting delegations of voters. Surrogates delivered personal attacks against his opponent (Jamieson 9-15). This made it possible for McKinley to give the impression, no matter how misleading, that he was not campaigning but merely waiting for the crowds to come and praise him.

Some of these songs presented attacks that might be too vicious for the candidates to utter themselves. Other songs offered giddy praise for the favored candidate. They supplied part of the hullabaloo that formed a part of this, perhaps the first modern presidential campaign.1

Voters of the era were prone to turn out enthusiastically for political parades and meetings (Tindall and Shi 992). An interesting contrast developed, in which a campaign event might begin with a song and a rabble-rousing introductory speech, after which the candidate would rise in the midst of the commotion as a model of dignity to express his own views. (Songs could, of course, be sung in other forums, such as local rallies in the candidate's absence.)

For example, on September 11, 1896, during McKinley's front porch campaign, a group of Vermonters came to Canton, Ohio to pay a call on McKinley, to make a presentation to him, and to hear him speak. Part of their presentation was an original song, performed by a choir from St. Albans. The choir began by addressing the economic issues of the time, but not in the usual analytical tone of deliberative speech: "The mills are a-stoppin' an' the markets are a-droppin', / We want yer, McKinley, yes we do." The closest that this song came to giving a reason occurred when it stated that: "We've been thinkin' till we're sad of the good old times we had / Up to eighteen ninety-two." In other words, the singers blamed the 1892 election of the Democratic President, Grover Cleveland, for hard times. They expressed pleasure that "the last four years of Grover, thank the Lord, are almost over." They derisively mentioned criticisms of the so called "robber tariff that McKinley advocated, and assured McKinley: "For the people are honest an' true: / They'll stand up for the right with all their brawny might, / An' they send, sir, their best regards to you" ("Voted for McKinley"). This overtly silly song endorsed the tariff, not because of subtle economic argument, but simply as an assertion of faith in McKinley and his ideas. Such fawning admiration might have seemed out of place in speech, and the stodgy McKinley could hardly say such things about himself. It was epideictic in the sense that it was performative and stressed praise and blame. Following the song and other political ceremonies, McKinley came forward to give a brief speech about the tariff and the money standard ("Voted for McKinley").