November, 2019
Lincoln – One of the most famous members of Nebraska's Hall of Fame, William Jennings Bryan, has suffering yet another slight, albeit without apparent intention or malice. His statue has been moved from the U.S. Capitol to the Nebraska National Guard Museum in Seward.
The movement out of Washington is innocent enough in Bryan's case, as the Nebraska Legislature determined that it was time for Standing Bear and Willa Cather to represent the state in the Capitol's statuary hall rather than Bryan and J. Sterling Morton. However, because Morton's removal was strategic to avoid growing embarrassment over his sympathies with slavery and the Confederate cause, some may wonder – incorrectly – if Bryan also had something untoward in his past and it was time for him to go as well.
In reality, Morton and Bryan were political enemies and their pairing in Washington has always been uneasy. Their paired removal only adds to the irony.
Likewise, the acquisition of Bryan's statue by the Nebraska National Guard Museum is innocent enough and actually quite a coup to help put the museum on the map. It should stimulate interest in Bryan's military career and his views on foreign policy and imperialism, not just provide another reason to visit Seward.
For Nebraska's political reporter nonpareil, Don Walton of the Lincoln Journal Star, the relocation of Bryan's statue to the museum is too much. He would like to see Bryan's statue placed on Lincoln's Centennial Mall. Bryan, he points out, was so much more than a member of Nebraska's National Guard.
That's why the movement of any of his statues elicits notice. Bryan was the founder of the modern Democratic Party. He was instrumental in the passage of four amendments to the U.S. Constitution (16, 17, 18, 19). He was a thorn in the side of bankers. Perhaps that is why, in the 1960s, Nebraska Republican governor Norbert Tiemann, a Wausa banker, removed Bryan's statue from the front of the Nebraska state capitol, at the head of Centennial Mall, in favor of a less-conspicuous place under a tree at Bryan's Lincoln home, Fairview.
Beyond looking at Bryan's career, now is also a good time to reflect on Bryan's family. His brother Charles was twice governor of Nebraska and the Democratic nominee for U.S. vice president in 1924. His wife Mary Baird Bryan was an attorney and a full partner in all her husband's campaigns and offices. She sat in on meetings of President Wilson's cabinet with her husband, the Secretary of State.
Daughter Ruth Bryan Owen was the first Florida congresswoman and the first woman to be a U.S. ambassador. She was a delegate to the San Francisco conference that established the United Nations, and is a member of the Florida Women's Hall of Fame.
Bryan's granddaughter Ruth "Kitty" Leavitt, for whom he once had custody after his daughter Ruth's divorce, paradoxically became the wife of Robert Lehman, longtime head of Lehman Brothers, the investment bankers. Bryan's other daughter, Grace, also married a banker, in California, but is better known for her writing about the Bryan family's world travels.
It is more than appropriate to place a Bryan statue on Lincoln's Centennial Mall. Another good idea would be for the University of Nebraska to establish a Center for Bryan Studies. Far from being demoted, Bryan's star is actually rising among historians worldwide. There is much to discover. I'd like to know how his travels and his family, especially his daughter Ruth, influenced the development of his abhorrence of eugenics and Social Darwinism, of which we know little beyond H.L. Mencken's clever but superficial reportage at the end of Bryan's life.
Statues aside, Bryan will never be removed from Washington, as he and several members of his family are buried in Arlington National Cemetery. And presumably his bust is safe in the Hall of Fame corridors of the Nebraska state capitol.
Another Nebraska Hall of Fame development is this new article about one-time nominees Frederic and Edith Clements, founders of the discipline of plant ecology.* Because the work of one cannot be separated from the other, the Nebraska law allowing for only one person to be chosen during a nomination cycle should be amended to allow their joint consideration. Readers may find it of interest that, through their common university connections, the Clementses were an influence on Willa Cather and on Ruth and Grace Bryan.
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*Available through UNL Digital Commons as a publication of the University of Nebraska State Museum staff and affiliates. https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1000&context=unsmaffil
