The Showdown in Dayton, Tennessee
Left to right (seated): H.E. Hicks, attorney; John Scopes; Walter White, Supt. Of Schools; County Judge J.G. McKenzie. Left to right (standing): B. M. Wilbur, Justice of the Peace; W.C. Haggard, attorney; W.E. Morgan; Dr. George Rappleyea; S. K. Hicks, attorney; and F.E. Robinson, chairman Rhea County Board of Education.
In the early 1920s, William Jennings Bryan carried an anti-evolutionist message across the country and denounced the teaching of evolution in public education. In 1923, the first state anti-evolution bill became law. In 1925, Tennessee enacted the Butler Act, prohibiting the teaching of evolution in public schools. The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), then five years old, responded in Tennessee newspapers that it would defend anyone who violated the new law, in hopes of testing it as a constitutional issue. George Rappleyea, an engineer in Dayton, saw the economic benefit of a local trial and helped to organize the case. Recruited for the effort was a young high school teacher named John T. Scopes (1900-70). Scopes was not sure if he had taught evolution, though he had taught from George Hunter’s Civic Biology (1914), the standard textbook that included it. Scopes agreed to be indicted.
News of the case gained immediate attention. The first to volunteer service for Scopes’s defense, John R. Neal (1876-1959), had been fired from the University of Tennessee’s law faculty, likely in part for defending a professor who continued to teach evolution. Darrow also joined the defense, by most accounts after hearing that Bryan would join the prosecution. Arthur Garfield Hays (1881-1954), general counsel of the ACLU, also traveled to Dayton, as did attorney Dudley Field Malone (1882-1950), who had served under Bryan in the State Department.
For more about the prosecution and defense teams, see the section “Major Players.”
Letter from William Jennings Bryan to Jay Bartlett, December 26, 1893.
William Jennings Bryan was a complex political figure at the forefront of American life in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. A three-time presidential candidate who trained as a lawyer, Bryan served as a congressional Democrat from Nebraska (1891-95) and later Secretary of State (1913-15) under Woodrow Wilson. He earned his reputation as a populist by touting the right of unions to strike, women’s national suffrage, the eight-hour working day, and a minimum wage. His famed oratory, public appeal, and a periodical, The Commoner, contributed to his nickname, “the Great Commoner.” At the Scopes Trial, Bryan met excited support in the courtroom, and was feted throughout Dayton. He also took the stand in the trial’s centerpiece exchange on evolution.
This letter, written as a representative prior to his presidential campaigns, indicates some of Bryan’s devoted following, as he provides a lawyer with his noteworthy congressional speeches and bills.
Letter from William Jennings Bryan to Clarence Darrow. March 29, 1902.
It is an irony that in their earlier careers, Darrow and Bryan shared political views and interests. Both men fought vigorously against wealthy railroad, mining, and banking interests. Their politics focused on American social welfare, and their sympathies lay with workers and the poor. In the 1896 election, Bryan ran for president, while Darrow’s mentor, John Altgeld, ran for governor of Illinois and Darrow pursued a congressional seat, all on the Democratic ticket. All three lost their races.
By the early 20th century, differences between the two men became more significant. Bryan was an agrarian populist who appealed more to rural Christians; Darrow had developed a secular and urban-based progressivism. Bryan’s causes included anti-evolutionism and support for Prohibition, which Darrow denounced throughout the 1920s.
In this letter from 1902, Bryan writes solicitously to Darrow after John Altgeld’s death about raising funds to support Altgeld’s widow. Bryan here volunteers his own money and suggests ways to secure further contributions.
Clarence Darrow, The Plea of Clarence Darrow, August 22nd, 23rd & 25th, MCMXXIIII … Chicago: Ralph Fletcher Seymour, 1924.
In 1925, at age sixty-seven, Darrow was still at the height of his powers. The years 1924 and 1925 were arguably the most successful of his career. Having moved away from representing organized labor, he gained preeminent fame for murder defenses, showcasing his extraordinary litigation skills. Known for hours-long appeals to the jury, Darrow built sympathy for his clients and often highlighted causative factors beyond the defendants’ control.
At the time of the Scopes Trial, Darrow’s most famous defense was the recent Leopold and Loeb “thrill killing” case (1924), in which two wealthy Chicagoans murdered a young boy, shocking the country. Darrow’s twelve-hour plea before the judge to spare the men’s lives relied partly on arguments about their psychology and education. His plea at the sentencing hearing became famous in its own right and successfully saved the young men from the death penalty. At the Scopes Trial, as journalist H.L. Mencken wrote afterwards, Darrow’s main speech, before a religious audience, had no similar effect.
This copy of Darrow’s plea in the Leopold and Loeb case is inscribed by Darrow to his son, Paul.
Arthur Garfield Hays. City Lawyer: The Autobiography of a Law Practice. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1942.
Arthur Garfield Hays was a central figure at the trial and the appeal. General counsel of the ACLU in New York, Hays’s work for civil liberties was as significant as Darrow’s in the 1920s and 1930s. He took part in a series of high-profile cases, working with Darrow on the Sweet case just months after the Scopes trial, and later the Scottsboro trials (1931). For Scopes’s appeal, Hays played an important role as coordinator of research and drafted at least part of the appeal brief.
In Dayton, however, the approaches of Hays and Darrow differed. Hays and the ACLU wanted to show that religion and evolution were compatible and worried about Darrow’s willingness to alienate Christians. Hays wrote, “if the fight of liberalism and honest thinking is to be won it must have the support of millions of intelligent Christians who accept the Bible as a book of morals and inspiration.” Concern over Darrow’s blunt criticisms in part led the ACLU to try, unsuccessfully, to have Darrow removed from the defense or sidelined. John Scopes himself insisted that Darrow continue to represent him.
This copy of Hays’s autobiography is inscribed by Hays to Darrow’s granddaughter, Mary Darrow Simonson. Respectful of Darrow’s legacy several years after his death, Hays refers to Darrow as “your illustrious grandfather.”