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Master of Arts / Department of History / Robert D. Linder / American society has been heavily influenced by religion, since before the United States existed as a nation. It has provided a sense of providential guidance and protection that has shaped or influenced internal politics and foreign policy alike. How were attitudes toward expansion and imperialism affected by religion throughout American history? Was the resultant ideology consistent? If not, what changed to cause a shift? The purpose of this thesis is to explore those questions. Using a wide breadth of material including primary and secondary sources, this thesis demonstrates that society was heavily influenced by religious rhetoric, whether spoken from the pulpit or in print. It further demonstrates how political leaders and religious leaders utilized rhetoric of divine causation and justification in addition to more tangible factors such as economics or security for expansionist thought. Significantly, concepts of racism were justified or reviled in religious terms. Ironically, opposing views on these topics both chose to use religion as their weapon to prove their points. Culminating at the time of the Spanish-American War of 1898, and the follow-on Philippine-American War, the imperial debate was heavily influenced by religion and was a milestone in transforming American national policy and thought.

Historians have long been fascinated by the last decade of the nineteenth century. It was in these years that one of the great industrial reform movements arose, spearheaded in much of the West and South by the Populists. It was also a decade in which the nation fought its first foreign war in half a century and forcibly took possession of its first major overseas colonial possessions. Scholars have frequently attempted to discuss the two phenomena in conjunction, but their attempts thus far have been shallow and unsatisfactory. This study examines the Populists of the U.S. West in detail, with a special focus upon the years from 1898 to 1900. Within the first years of the decade, the Populists had developed a substantial following by demanding a reorganization of the national economy for the benefit of small-scale producers and laborers. By 1896, the party formed a vital component of the reform coalition that won most of the elected offices of the region. The Populists and their allies appeared poised to become a substantial force for change, but it was not to be. Wars---the first with Spain over Cuba, the second in the Philippines to quash an independence movement---shifted public attention to other matters. Western Populists and Democrats responded by extending their critique of concentrated wealth to foreign affairs, and they attributed the drive for empire to the demands of financiers and industrialists. Yet by attacking the American war efforts, they laid themselves open to charges of disloyalty. President McKinley and the western Republicans who followed him saw the opportunities provided by the conflicts. They declared that colonies would promote trade and promised that the wealth generated by this commerce would trickle down to all classes. To an even greater degree, they skillfully used the wars to rally support around the nation's soldiers and the "flag." And finally, western Republicans successfully labeled the Populists and Democrats who opposed the wars as traitors and "copperheads." In this way conservatives destroyed the most serious challenge to the American industrial order.

This thesis looks at the life and political influence of William Jennings Bryan, and his work as a champion of the rights of the common man.

William Jennings Bryan exercised great political power for thirty years in America. Through his efforts the Democratic Party power base was broadened to include Jews, Negroes businessmen, and farmers. Bryan's call for political and social reform found many supporters in the State of Utah.It is difficult to assess what actually caused William J. Bryan to lose the 1900 Presidential election in Utah. Yet, we must put to rest the conclusion that he lost solely because silver was an unimportant issue to the Utah electorate in 1900. The powerful influence of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints on Utah politics had much to do with Bryan's reversal.

The story of the election of 1896 and the part played by Kentucky in that great conflict offers no parallel, so far as interest in a national election is concerned, in the annals of the political history of the state. Perhaps in no other nationwide campaign did both Kentucky's leaders and her citizenry as well take such an active and intensive part. State and national leaders were extolled on the one hand, and degraded on the other. Party principles were invoked to bear witness to the truth by one group, and condemned as the diabolical instruments of the money power or anarchy by another. Men and women of all ages and description took up the fight for or against free silver and the gold standard. Even children were enthralled by the parades, the speeches, and the general enthusiasm expressed during those hectic days. In this study the impossible attempt to exhaust the subject has not been made. So much was written and spoken during the time that to include even a small part of it would fill volumes. Songs, poetry, and literature of all kinds poured forth daily from interested and enthusiastic pens. An effort has been made, however, to separate the wheat from the chaff, and to include those facts that will best tell the history of the election of 1896 and at the same time give a cross-section of the political and economic life of Kentucky on the eve of and during that struggle.