The Midwest Region Leader William Jennings Bryan Capital Chicago Start Bias None Religion Protestantism Civilopedia

The Midwest Region led by William Jennings Bryan is a custom civilization by Octoski.

This mod requires Brave New World.

Overview

Midwest Region

American Indians were oriented toward the open prairies where they engaged in communal hunts for buffalo (bison). In the northern forests, the Ottawas and Potawatomis separated into small family groups for hunting. The Winnebagos and Menominees used both hunting methods interchangeably and built up widespread trade networks extending as far west as the Rockies, north to the Great Lakes, south to the Gulf of Mexico, and east to the Atlantic Ocean. Plains Indians are usually divided into two broad classifications, with some degree of overlap. The first group were fully nomadic, following the vast herds of buffalo. The second group of Plains Indians (sometimes referred to as Prairie Indians) were the semi-sedentary tribes who, in addition to hunting buffalo, lived in villages and raised crops.

In 1673, the governor of New France sent Jacques Marquette, a Catholic priest and missionary, and Louis Jolliet, a fur trader to map the way to the Northwest Passage to the Pacific. They traveled through Michigan's upper peninsula to the northern tip of Lake Michigan. On canoes, they crossed the massive lake and landed at present-day Green Bay, Wisconsin. They entered the Mississippi River on June 17, 1673. Marquette and Jolliet soon realized that the Mississippi could not possibly be the Northwest Passage because it flowed south. Nevertheless, the journey continued. They recorded much of the wildlife they encountered. They turned around at the junction of the Mississippi River and Arkansas River and headed back. Marquette and Jolliet were the first to map the northern portion of the Mississippi River. They confirmed that it was easy to travel from the St. Lawrence River through the Great Lakes all the way to the Gulf of Mexico by water, that the native peoples who lived along the route were generally friendly, and that the natural resources of the lands in between were extraordinary. New France officials led by LaSalle followed up and erected a 4,000-mile network of fur trading posts.

At the end of the American Revolution there were few if any American settlers in the Midwest. However the U.S. gained possession of the entire Midwest east of the Mississippi, and pioneers headed to Ohio, where large tracks had been awarded to war veterans. American settlement began either via routes over the Appalachian Mountains or through the waterways of the Great Lakes. Fort Pitt (now Pittsburgh) at the source of the Ohio River became the main base for settlers moving into the Midwest. Marietta, Ohio in 1787 became the first settlement in Ohio, but not until the defeat of Indian tribes at the Battle of Fallen Timbers in 1794 was large-scale settlement possible. Large numbers also came north from Kentucky into southern Ohio, Indiana and Illinois. The region's fertile soil produced corn and vegetables; most farmers were self-sufficient. They cut trees and claimed the land, then sold it to newcomers and then moved further west to repeat the process.

The Northwest Ordinance region, comprising the heart of the Midwest, was the first large region of the United States that prohibited slavery (the Northeastern United States emancipated slaves in the 1830s). The regional southern boundary was the Ohio River, the border of freedom and slavery in American history and literature. The Midwest, particularly Ohio, provided the primary routes for the Underground Railroad, whereby Midwesterners assisted slaves to freedom from their crossing of the Ohio River through their departure on Lake Erie to Canada. Created in the early 19th century, the Underground Railroad was at its height between 1850 and 1860. One estimate suggests that by 1850, 100,000 slaves had escaped via the Underground Railroad. The first violent conflicts leading up to the Civil War occurred between two neighboring Midwestern states, Kansas and Missouri, involving anti-slavery Free-Staters and pro-slavery "Border Ruffian" elements, that took place in the Kansas Territory and the western frontier towns of Missouri roughly between 1854 and 1858. At the heart of the conflict was the question of whether Kansas would enter the Union as a free state or slave state. As such, Bleeding Kansas was a proxy war between Northerners and Southerners over the issue of slavery.

During the mid-19th century, the region got its first railroads, and the railroad junction in Chicago became the world's largest. Even today, a century after Henry Ford, six Class I railroads meet in Chicago. By the time of the American Civil War, European immigrants bypassed the East Coast of the United States to settle directly in the interior: German immigrants to Ohio, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Michigan, Illinois, and Missouri; Irish immigrants to port cities on the Great Lakes, especially Chicago; Danes, Swedes, and Norwegians to Iowa, Nebraska, Wisconsin, Minnesota, and the Dakotas; and Finns to Upper Michigan and northern/central Minnesota. Poles, Hungarians, and Jews settled in Midwestern cities. The late 19th century saw industrialization, immigration, and urbanization that fed the Industrial Revolution, and the heart of industrial domination and innovation was in the Great Lakes states of the Midwest, which only began its slow decline by the late 20th century.

William Jennings Bryan

William Jennings Bryan was born in Salem, Illinois on March 19, 1860, to Silas Lillard Bryan and Mariah Elizabeth (Jennings) Bryan. Until age ten, Bryan was home-schooled, finding in the Bible and McGuffey Readers support for his views that gambling and liquor were evil and sinful. To attend Whipple Academy, which was attached to Illinois College, Bryan was sent to Jacksonville, Illinois in 1874. In the Democratic landslide of 1890, Bryan was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives, from Nebraska's First Congressional District. The growing prohibitionist movement entered the election of 1890 with its own slate of candidates. In the three-way race in the First Congressional District, Bryan received 6,713 more votes than his nearest opponent. Bryan had an innate talent in oratory. He gave speeches, organized meetings, and adopted resounding resolutions that eventually culminated in the founding of the American Bimetallic League, which then evolved into the National Bimetallic Union, and finally the National Silver Committee. At the 1896 Democratic National Convention, Bryan lambasted Eastern moneyed classes for supporting the gold standard at the expense of the average worker. His "Cross of Gold" speech made him the sensational new face in the Democratic Party. That same year he became the first presidential candidate to campaign in a car (a donated Mueller) in Decatur, Illinois.

With the outbreak of the Spanish–American War in 1898, Bryan was forced to consider his party's stance on foreign policy. On one hand, Bryan was critical of militarism. Yet Spain's suppression of Cuban and Filipino self-government movements went against his view of his country's “Global Mission,” in which he envisioned the United States spreading democracy to the rest of the world. With this idealism in mind, Bryan enthusiastically threw in his support for President McKinley's declaration of war against Spain. Bryan argued that "universal peace cannot come until justice is enthroned throughout the world. Until the right has triumphed in every land and love reigns in every heart, government must, as a last resort, appeal to force." He volunteered for duty and became colonel of a Nebraska militia regiment. He contracted typhoid fever in Florida and stayed there to recuperate, never seeing combat. He ran as an anti-imperialist in 1900, finding himself in alliance with Andrew Carnegie, as well as others who had fought against silver. Republicans mocked Bryan as indecisive, or a coward, a point which L. Frank Baum satirized viciously in the Bryan-like Cowardly Lion in The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, published in the spring of 1900. In a typical day he gave four hour-long speeches and shorter talks that added up to six hours of speaking. At an average rate of 175 words a minute, he turned out 63,000 words a day, enough to fill 52 columns of a newspaper. In Wisconsin, he once made 12 speeches in 15 hours.

The 1908 election was Bryan’s third attempt at gaining the presidency. The Democrats nominated Bryan by a wide margin at the Democratic convention held in Denver and decided on John Kern, a politician from Indiana, as his running mate. Bryan ran against the Republicans, and Theodore Roosevelt’s hand-picked nominee William Howard Taft. He campaigned against corporate domination, urging that all corporation contributions be made public before election day, and that failure to cooperate be made a penal offense. Following his defeat in the election of 1900, Bryan needed money, and his powerful voice and 100% name recognition were assets that could be capitalized. For the next 25 years, Bryan was the most popular speaker on the Chautauqua circuit, delivering thousands of paid speeches on current events in hundreds of towns and cities across the country, even while serving as Secretary of State. He usually charged $500 per speech in addition to a percentage of the profits. His most popular lecture (and his personal favorite) was a lecture entitled "The Prince of Peace", which stressed that Christian theology was the solid foundation of morality, and individual and group morality was the foundation for peace and equality. Another famous lecture from this period, "The Value of an Ideal", was a stirring call to public service.

For supporting Woodrow Wilson for the presidency in 1912, Bryan was appointed Secretary of State, the top cabinet position. For all his enormous influence in the Democratic Party, the only powerful office he ever held was his two years as Secretary of State. Bryan kept busy in 1913-1915, negotiating 28 treaties that promised arbitration of disputes before war broke out between the signatory countries and the United States. He made several attempts to negotiate a treaty with Germany, but ultimately was never able to succeed. Bryan campaigned for the Constitutional amendments on prohibition and women's suffrage. Bryan's national campaigning helped Congress pass the 18th Amendment in 1918, which shut down all saloons as of 1920. But while prohibition was in effect, Bryan did not work to secure better enforcement. He opposed a highly controversial resolution at the 1924 convention, condemning the Ku Klux Klan, expecting it would soon fold. Bryan's participation in the highly publicized 1925 Scopes Trial served as a capstone to his career. He was asked by William Bell Riley to represent the World Christian Fundamentals Association as counsel at the trial. During the trial, Bryan took the stand and was questioned by defense lawyer Clarence Darrow about his views on the Bible. "Asked when the Flood occurred, Bryan consulted Ussher's Bible Concordance, and gave the date as 2348 B.C., or 4273 years ago. Did not Bryan know, asked Darrow, that Chinese civilization had been traced back at least 7000 years?" Bryan conceded that he did not. When he was asked if the records of any other religion made mention of a flood at the time he cited, Bryan replied: "The Christian religion has always been good enough for me - I never found it necessary to study any competing religion."

Dawn of Man

Greetings, William Jennings Bryan! You lead the populist American Midwest civilization. Birthed from the trek of pioneers, settlers and entrepreneurs across the rugged United States, the Midwest developed into the breadbasket of America. During your lifespan, it thrived with the advent of the railroad, farming and automotive assembly lines. The Midwest is not a nation, but a region and a country all the same. filled with optimism and determination. Mr. Secretary, can you lead the Midwest towards a promising tomorrow? Can you build a civilization that will stand the test of time?

Introduction: Good morning to you! What brings you down this dusty road? I'm William Jennings Bryan, at your service.

Introduction: It's a pleasure to make your aquaintence. The name is William Jennings Bryan, a man of the people.

Introduction: Well, hello there! I'm William Jennings Bryan, but you can just call me Bill.

Defeat: Success is brought by continued labor and continued watchfulness. We must struggle on, not for one moment hesitate, nor take one backward step.

Defeat: You cannot judge a man's life by the success of a moment, by the victory of an hour, or even by the results of a year. You must view his life as a whole.

Defeat: On to Florida, maybe, to relax a while.

Strategy

Unique Attributes

Music

Peace Theme War Theme Johnny Cash - I Walk The Line (Instrumental) Ghost Riders In The Sky (Instrumental) - Johnny Cash I Walk The Line (Instrumental) - Johnny Cash Ghost Riders In The Sky (Instrumental) - Johnny Cash