The Republic for Which It Stands: The United States during Reconstruction and the Gilded Age, 1865-1896 (Oxford History of the United States)

by Richard White

A third major change, one for which Bryan deserves much of the credit, reflected a shift in attitudes toward governance. The Populists had been a party of government activism and intervention, as well as democratization of governance. Bryan’s charge that the Republicans were the party of corporate power and monopoly had an element of truth, but a deeper truth was that the Republicans had long been the party of government intervention and public welfare, which is one reason the Mugwumps had proved so restless within it. It was the party of corporate subsidies, of the tariff, and increasingly of an expanded military. It was also the party of the pension, of federal protection of civil rights against state attempts to limit them, and, less successfully, of federal monitoring of public morals. The Democrats had been the party of localism and of minimal federal power. Such Democrats remained, but after 1896 they did not dominate the Democratic Party, which under Bryan sponsored government intervention to improve the well-being of the mass of citizens.