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In a few days we America will be electing our next president, between William McKinley and William Bryan. Vote. McKinley. Bryan just doesn’t have the character and experience to uphold an enormous duty. Bryan’s deep voice can’t help him win this election.

In the 1890, the majority of Americans were familiar with stories from the Old and New Testament, upon which many cartoonists drew. William Jennings Bryan was famous for his use of Christian religious imagery, including the "cross of gold" metaphor used in his famous convention speech. But Biblical images and stories--such as that of Sampson and Delilah--were equally prominent among Republicans.

In 1896, immigration had long been contentious in presidential politics. Before the Civil War, some native-born Americans feared Irish Catholic immigration would undermine democracy and Protestantism, and such fears still lurked (for example, some whites joined the American Protective Association in the 1890s). New anxieties arose about immigrants from Southern and Eastern Europe, including Italians, Poles, Hungarians, and Russian Jews. Most whites saw Asian immigrants as even more unassimilable, and far more racially different, than Europeans.

Not surprisingly, veterans played a major role in the campaign and McKinley's status as a veteran was widely stressed in the Republican press. He was, in fact, the first Republican president since Lincoln who was not a former Union General (being young, he had only attained the rank of Major before the war's end). The ghost of Lincoln appeared in a number of cartoons; Populists and Socialists as well as Republicans often sought to claim his legacy of federal activism.

Rather, 'slavery' served most often as a metaphor for the plight of the white working-class--or in Republican cartoons, for Bryan's proposed 'sale' of the national credit. Republicans also branded the so-called 'anarchy plank' in the Chicago Platform a sign of secession sentiment among Democrats, who counted many white Southern supporters.