Background
Richard Bland was born near Hartford, Kentucky, United States, the son of Stoughten Edward and Margaret Parks (Nall) Bland, he was self-supporting as a mere boy.
Richard Bland was born near Hartford, Kentucky, United States, the son of Stoughten Edward and Margaret Parks (Nall) Bland, he was self-supporting as a mere boy.
Richard attended Hartford College and graduate with a teacher's certificate.
After graduation Bland taught school in Kentucky, and after his removal to Missouri in 1855, in Wayne County on the Ozark border. The next year he went to California and for ten years lived in the mining camps of California, Colorado, and Nevada, prospecting, working as a miner, teaching school, and, after his admission to the bar, serving as treasurer of Carson County, then in Utah Territory. He returned to Missouri in 1866, and in 1869 opened his office at Lebanon, a little Ozark town, his home until his death. Though the boundaries of his Congressional district were repeatedly changed, they always included much of the Ozark country. Thus he was intimately acquainted with the problems of the silver miners and of the more primitive frontier farmers, the two economic groups most devoted to Free Silver.
Bland prospered as a lawyer, making many friends by his gratuitous aid to Democrats disenfranchised under the test oath, and in 1872 he was nominated for Congress without much effort on his part, and was elected with the help of the Liberal Republicans; save for one Congress, 1895 to 1897, he served continuously until his death. His first term in Congress was only normally eventful, but in the Democratic House of 1875-1877 he was appointed chairman of the Committee on Mines and Mining and began his life-long fight against the "Crime of '73" and the demonetization of silver. Bland's bill for the free coinage of silver passed the House in the second session but was smothered in the Senate. His leadership in the fight was recognized by his appointment to the congressional "Silver Commission" of 1876-1877. In 1879 he became a member of the Committee on Coinage, Weights and Measures, and its chairman in 1883, serving in that capacity whenever the Democrats controlled the House.
Bland became a national figure with the passage over Hayes's veto in 1878 of the compromise Bland-Allison Act remonetizing silver and providing for a limited coinage. The Bland Bill as it had passed the House provided for free coinage. He succeeded in defeating the repeal of the Bland-Allison Act in 1886, but again failed to secure a free coinage act. In 1890 he bitterly opposed the Sherman Silver Purchase Act as a travesty on bimetallism and again fought in vain to secure a free coinage act. The climax of his fight for free coinage came in his leadership of the unsuccessful opposition in 1893 to the repeal of the Sherman Act unless accompanied by the passage of a free coinage bill. In his famous "Parting of the Ways" speech of August 11, 1893, he served notice that the western Democrats would put Free Silver above party loyalty. Defeated for the first time in 1894 (by 70 votes) because of Democratic disgust with Cleveland and the presence of a separate Populist candidate, he preached Free Silver from the lecture platform and in 1895 was the leader of the Pertle Springs convention where the Free Silver wing secured control of the Missouri Democracy.
The similar control of the national party at Chicago made Bland admittedly the logical candidate for president in 1896. But his long career and a certain lack of appeal to the public imagination and to the crusading zeal of the Free-Silverites were fatal handicaps. After leading on the first three ballots, Bland withdrew his name when the set toward Bryan was unmistakable. He emphatically negatived the movement to nominate him as vice-president and later just as decidedly the proposal of nomination for governor; instead he was triumphantly reelected to Congress in 1896.
While Bland's views on the currency were quite unorthodox, his speeches and debates show wide reading and a real, if frankly one-sided, study. Unlike many of the free-silver inflationists he recognized the evils of a fiat paper money inflation. He also saw the desirability of an international agreement on bi-metallism; he believed however that an independent adoption by the United States would soon force the other nations into line, though this would involve, he admitted, a considerable temporary wrench to the bankers and investors. Throughout he urged the advantages of Free Silver to the "producing classes" in general rather than primarily to the agrarian group. This real interest in the common people was also clearly reflected in his denunciation of monopolies and his arguments against the protective tariff; he vigorously supported the Mills Bill and took the lead in opposing the McKinley tariff.
At the very end of his career Bland was an extreme anti-imperialist. Not a brilliant speaker or debater, he was effective through his mastery of his data, his clear-headedness and self-control, and a certain blunt honesty and sincerity. In a period of rather low standards in public life he was unusually sensitive as to personal and official honesty, withdrawing from the practise of law when first elected, refusing a silver service presented by the miners, and actually persisting in his refusal of his back pay under the "Salary Grab" act and of his mileage for a few days' recess between sessions. Both at Washington and on his farm near Lebanon he lived very simply on his salary, and died probably poorer than when he entered public life.
In his virtues and even in his failings, Bland suggests the better type of ante-bellum Jacksonian Democrat. Bland served in the United States House of Representatives from Missouri from 1873 to 1895 and from 1897 to 1899.
In 1873 Bland married Virginia Elizabeth Mitchell of Rolla.