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A Narrowing of Vision: Hardy L. Brian and the Fate of Louisiana Populism
By Joel Sipress, University of Wisconsin—Superior
In the 1890s, Hardy L. Brian was among Louisiana's leading Populists. He was a key founder of the Louisiana People's Party and served as state party secretary and editor of the organization's weekly newspaper. Son of a prominent agrarian dissident from the Louisiana piney woods, Brian believed deeply in the power of an aroused populace to bring fundamental changes to American political and economic life. Over time, however, he abandoned social movement organizing in favor of conventional party politics. The climax of this journey came in 1896, when Brian joined fellow delegates to the Populist national convention to give the People's Party presidential nomination to Democratic candidate William Jennings Bryan. The Bryan nomination cost the Populists their independent political identity and precipitated a collapse of their party organization. Hardy L. Brian's journey from agrarian rebel to conventional reform politician reflects a loss of faith in the power of the Populist vision. While he never abandoned the goal of fundamental change, Brian lost faith in the power of this goal to inspire and arouse. Instead, he embraced the logic of conventional party politics, and upon that logic the Populist vision foundered.
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On October 2, 1891, seventy-eight delegates from seventeen Louisiana parishes gathered in the town of Alexandria for the founding convention of the Louisiana People's Party. Although but a fraction of the state's parishes were represented, the atmosphere was euphoric. Presiding over the convention preliminaries was Grant Parish's Benjamin F. Brian, a bearded preacher who had struggled for over a decade to forge an independent political movement among the small farmers of the north-central Louisiana piney woods. Grant Parish was solidly for the People's Party, the preacher boasted. "Even the negroes had organized and were ready for it," he explained. The convention delegates adopted a platform that embraced the radical economic agenda of the National Farmers' Alliance, including calls for land reform, public control of the railroads, the free coinage of silver, and the enactment of the Alliance's subtreasury plan for low-interest government loans to farmers.1 |
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The Alexandria convention also issued a remarkable document entitled "An Address to the Voters of Louisiana, Irrespective of Class, Color, or Past Political Affiliations." The address was co-authored by Hardy Brian, secretary of the Winn Parish Farmers' Union (an affiliate of the National Farmers' Alliance) and son of Grant Parish's Benjamin Brian. Decrying the sufferings endured by "the great multitude of wealth producers" at the hands of "Monopoly, Stock Jobbery and Corruption," Brian declared the American republic to be on "the eve of a momentous political, economic, and industrial revolution." Whether that revolution would be accomplished through peaceable means none could foretell. "A revolution by violence," Brian wrote, "no matter how sacred its aims, must be accompanied by horrors and injustice at which civilized humanity shudders." A "revolution by ballot," by contrast, would "cost not a hair from the head of the guiltiest tyrant, not a single tear from an innocent victim." Brian called upon both black and white to aid the revolution by ballot. "If you heed not this appeal," he warned, "you will ere long send forth a different summons, or resign yourselves and your children to the utter bondage that is being prepared for us all."2 |
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