ABSTRACT
Early Life William Jennings Bryan was born March 19, 1860, in Salem, Illinois. His mother, nee Mariah Elizabeth Jennings, was reared as a Methodist; his father, Silas Lillard Bryan, of Scotch-Irish descent, was a devout Baptist and became a frontier lawyer, judge, and politician in south central Illinois. As a trial lawyer, Silas was known for his habit of quoting Scripture to the jury. William Jennings Bryan grew up on a large farm which his father had purchased. The nearby town of Salem had an economy based primarily on agriculture, and Bryan's roots were in an agrarian environment that valued hard work, individualism, and religious faith. Especially influential in the Salem area were those churches stressing the necessity of a conversion experience. The revivalistic emphasis of the evangelicals in southern Illinois had a profound effect on young Bryan. Indeed, in later years, he would become what one historian has described as a "political evangelist," a politician whose oratory resembled that of a revival preacher and whose political faith contained a strong moralistic tone. Bryan the politician saw himself as God's warrior sent to destroy the Philistines, and he tended to see his own political concepts as baptized in light while those of his opponents as covered with darkness.
