In particular, Bryan’s opponents criticized what they called the “anarchy plank” of the Democratic platform, which indirectly condemned federal intervention in the Pullman strike of 1894. That walkout brought transportation to a standstill in Chicago and interrupted postal delivery and interstate commerce as the strike spread nationally under the leadership of union president Eugene Debs. Against the objections of Governor Altgeld, the Cleveland administration secured an injunction against the strikers from a federal judge and the president ordered federal troops to protect transit of the U.S. mail and operation of the railroads generally. As a result, Debs was jailed and the administration’s actions broke the strike. Cleveland argued that the federal intervention was constitutionally justified by presidential emergency powers.

By contrast, the 1896 Democratic platform contended that such “arbitrary interference by Federal authorities in local affairs” was a violation of the constitutional rights of states and individual citizens. It advocated trial by jury in cases of contempt against the federal courts (as in the case of Debs when he ignored the injunction). Throughout the 1896 campaign, supporters of the Republican ticket associated the Democrats in general and the plank in particular with labor unrest, social anarchy, and states rights. The last issue was a sort of revival of the “bloody shirt” campaigns of previous years, which linked states rights to secession, Civil War, and the suppression of black civil rights.