National Democratic Party

The National Democratic Party, also known as Gold Democrats, was a short-lived political party of Bourbon Democrats who opposed the regular party nominee William Jennings Bryan in the 1896 presidential election. The party was then a "liberal" party in the context of the times, which is more of a fiscal-conservative or classical-liberal in the political context of the United States today. Most members were admirers of Grover Cleveland as they considered Bryan a dangerous man and charged that his "free silver" proposals would devastate the economy. They nominated the Democratic politicians John M. Palmer, a former Republican governor of Illinois and Union general; and Simon Bolivar Buckner, a former governor of Kentucky and Confederate general, for president and vice president, respectively. They also ran a few candidates for Congress and other offices, including William Campbell Preston Breckinridge in Kentucky. Overview The new party's founders were disenchanted Democrats who saw its organization as a means to preserve the ideals of Thomas Jefferson, Andrew Jackson, and Grover Cleveland. In its first official statement, the executive committee of the party accused the Democratic Party of forsaking this tradition by nominating Bryan. For more than a century, it declared, the Democrats had believed "in the ability of every individual, unassisted, if unfettered by law, to achieve his own happiness" and had upheld his "right and opportunity peaceably to pursue whatever course of conduct he would, provided such conduct deprived no other individual of the equal enjoyment of the same right and opportunity". They stood "for freedom of speech, freedom of conscience, freedom of trade, and freedom of contract, all of which are implied by the century-old battle-cry of the Democratic party, 'Individual Liberty.'" The party criticized both the inflationist policies of the Democrats and the protectionism of the Republicans.