National party conventions have decisively altered the course of political development at several points in American history. Among the most important were the Republican party convention in 1856, which fielded a ticket openly hostile to slavery; the Democratic conventions in Charleston and Baltimore in 1860, which produced the party split that guaranteed the election of a Republican president later that year; and the 1964 Republican convention, which, by nominating Barry Goldwater, decimated the traditionally powerful moderate and internationalist wing of the party. The 1896 Democratic convention was also one of the great turning points in American political development.

In that convention, southern and western insurgency triumphed over the patricians of the East. Lower-class immigrants and urban workers gained influence, if not outright control, over the party throughout the industrial belt. And the Populists were doomed to extinction by an impending merger with the Democrats under William Jennings Bryan. Pathos is produced in all great turning points. As traditional coalitions shatter, personal ties and alliances are torn apart. This rending takes place under conditions of great uncertainty, and, with this uncertainty, politics takes on an intensely personal coloration. In this instance, the silver delegates were gambling that a silver platform would give them enough additional electoral votes in the western plains and mountains to compensate for the certain loss of New York and other eastern states.