In the platform adopted at the convention, the "National Democratic party" was pledged to the general principles enunciated in the address and went on record as "opposed to all paternalism and all class legislation." It declared that the Chicago convention had attacked "individual freedom, the right of private contract, the independence of the judiciary, and the authority of the President to enforce Federal laws." It denounced protection and the free coinage of silver as two schemes designed for the personal profit of the few at the expense of the masses; it declared in favor of the gold standard, indorsed President Cleveland's administration, and went to the support of the Supreme Court by condemning "all efforts to degrade that tribunal or to impair the confidence and respect which it has deservedly held."
This platform received the support of President Cleveland, who, in response to an invitation to attend the meeting at which the candidates were to be notified, said: "As a Democrat, devoted to the principles and integrity of my party, I should be delighted to be present on an occasion so significant and to mingle with those who are determined that the voice of true Democracy shall not be smothered and who insist that the glorious standard shall be borne aloft as of old in faithful hands."
In their acceptance speeches, Palmer and Buckner devoted more attention to condemning the Chicago platform than to explaining the principles for which they stood. General Buckner said: "The Chicago Convention would wipe virtually out of existence the Supreme Court which interprets the law, forgetting that our ancestors in England fought for hundreds of years to obtain a tribunal of justice which was free from executive control. They would wipe that out of existence and subject it to the control of party leaders to carry out the dictates of the party--they would paralyze the arm of the general government and forbid the powers to protect the lives and property of its citizens. That convention in terms almost placed a lighted torch in the hands of the incendiary and urged the mob to proceed without restraint to pillage and murder at their discretion."
The campaign which followed the conventions was the most remarkable in the long history of our quadrennial spectacles. Terror is always a powerful instrument in politics, and it was never used with greater effect than in the summer and autumn of 1896. Some of Mr. Bryan's utterances, particularly on the income tax, frightened the rich into believing, or pretending to believe, that his election would be the beginning of a wholesale confiscation. The Republicans replied to Mr. Bryan's threats by using the greatest of all terrors, the terror of unemployment, with tremendous effect. Everywhere they let the country understand that the defeat of Mr. McKinley would close factories and throw thousands of workingmen out of employment, and manufacturers and railways were accused by Mr. Bryan of exercising coercion on a large scale.