THE FIRST SIX DAYS
Amid the sweltering heat, the initial six days of the trial were largely occupied with legal details, such as the selection of a jury, questioning the law’s constitutionality, and debate over admissibility of expert testimony regarding evolution and the Bible. On the fourth day, two schoolboys, Howard Morgan and Harry Shelton, spoke briefly about what they thought they could remember in the classroom.
“The mother of one of the high school boys who testified at the trial said she wanted her son to learn more about everything, including evolution. The mother of the other boy who testified said she did not mind if they taught her son evolution ‘every day of the year. I can see no harm in it whatever.’ ” Donald W. Patten, “The Scopes Trial,” in Symposium on Creation III (1971), p. 115.
Then came the momentous seventh day.
4 – MONDAY, JULY 20, 1925
THE SEVENTH DAY
By this time, things were so dull inside the courtroom that most of the reporters decided to skip out after lunch and go find some place cool to sit (interestingly resting on the 7th day of a trial between theistic and atheistic creation). So on the biggest day of the trial, only a half-dozen of the 200 reporters were present. When the day was over, young Scopes had to be recruited to help write up stories in the absence of the reporters)
It was on this seventh day that Darrow was cited for contempt of court. Just after that, Darrow asked that Bryan take the stand for examination, and this he agreed to do if he in turn would be allowed to question Darrow on the next day.
This proved to be a mistake. The prosecution had tried to focus on whether a law had been violated, and whether the people had the right to control their own schools. But Bryan, in his willingness to be a witness for Christianity, opened himself to the manipulative attacks of Darrow, who brought in irrelevant issues, and ridiculed the Bible, Bryan, and the law.
“How old is the earth?” “Did everyone outside the Ark die in the Flood? If so, what about the fish?” “Where did Cain get his wife?” “How did the snake walk on its tail?” Bryan had some answers; others he did not have. He had no books with him on the platform and he could not hold everything in his head. As a result, the press tended to portray him as a man who did not know enough.
For example, the reply to the first question would be to cite some of the wealth of scientific data showing that our planet is only a few thousand years old (chapter 6, Age of the Earth), as well as the social data indicating that agricultural, animal husbandry, and historical records are equally brief (chapter 18, Ancient Man).
The reply to the second question would be that, according to Genesis 6:7 and 7:21, 23, only the creatures on the land were totally wiped out, and, a study of paleontology reveals that large numbers of fish were also killed.
The answer to the third question was not fully clear until later in the century. Scientists today know that genetic load, or the gradual build-up of mutational defects in the genes, is why close relatives should not marry. In the beginning, it would have been ail right to do so, since there were no genetic flaws then. Yet Bryan, good man though he was, could not instantly know everything.
The answer to the fourth question would be this: Genesis 3:14 obviously has reference to a major change in the serpent. Its genetic code was actually restructured, so that its method of locomotion was entirely altered from what it previously had been. How had it earlier moved about? We are not told in this passage, but it would probably be either legs, or legs and wings. It is significant that ancient legends speak not only of a universal Flood and an Ark, but also a time when there was a flying snake. The winged serpent has been a widespread symbol for thousands of years. As a result of the change in its DNA coding, the serpent henceforth would “eat dust.” If you try crawling at the same height from the ground, you will eat dust too.
The Bible is consistently accurate in its statements. In strong contrast are the confused utterances and mythical pronouncements of evolutionary theory.
“What Mr. Darrow was interested in . . was to show that the Bible is untrue and that evolution is an accepted fact ‘among all thinking people.‘ ” Western Recorder, July 30, 1925.
William Jennings Bryan had spent a lifetime as a public figure, whereas Clarence Darrow was a skilled criminal attorney. In his questioning, he used tricky methods in an attempt to confuse Bryan. We will discuss some of these in the appendix at the end of his chapter, but consider this example:
Darrow. But when you read that Jonah swallowed the whale, or that the whale swallowed Jonah, excuse me please, how do you literally interpret that?
Bryan: When I read that a big fish swallowed Jonah, it does not say whale.
Darrow. Doesn’t it? Are you sure?
Bryan: That is my recollection of it. A big fish, and I believe it, and I believe in a God who can make a whale and can make a man and make both do what He pleases.
Darrow. Mr. Bryan, doesn’t the New Testament say whale?
Bryan: I am not sure. My impression is that it says fish; but it does not make so much difference; I merely called your attention to where it says fish, it does not say whale.
Darrow. But in the New Testament it says whale, doesn’t it?
Bryan. That may be true; I cannot remember in my own mind what I read about it.
On and on it went, Darrow spending his time trying to confuse Bryan, and intermingling the confusion with unclear or tricky questions.
5 – TUESDAY, JULY 21, 1925
THE EIGHTH DAY
Then came the eighth day, and now it was time for Bryan to question Darrow. But the eighth day was the last, for the trial came to a sudden end. It just so happened that on the evening of the seventh day, threatening notes were given to both Bryan and Darrow. The next day, Darrow used this as a pretext for requesting an immediate end to the trial, claiming that it was for the protection of both men.
Yet the defendant, Scopes, had never been asked the simple question on which the whole trial depended: had he actually taught evolution in the school? In addition, the defense had never claimed that the accused was innocent of the charges, but now, instead, suddenly asked that the jury return a sentence of guilty. It was a strange trial in many respects.
Darrow’s sudden concern about safety and his request that a sentence of guilty be handed down, brought the entire trial to an immediate halt. This was a shrewd action, for it meant that Darrow would not have to mount the stand and be examined by Bryan, and it prevented Bryan from making his final speech. (Darrow made sure that he had already made his.)
The Butler Law lacked clarity in regard to the penalty on conviction. Was it to be assigned by the judge or by the jury? Uncertain, the judge decided that he himself would set the fine after the jury had brought in a verdict of guilty. Scopes was fined $100 by the judge, which was the minimum possible under the law. Bryan, kindly to the end, offered to pay the fine if Scopes did not have the money.
BRYAN’S LAST FIVE DAYS
So the trial ended Tuesday, July 21st, the eighth day of the trial. The reporters left town on a railroad train with a big sign they stuck on its side: `Protoplasm Special.” Bryan spent the next five days writing out the 15,000 word speech which he had not been able to deliver at the trial, so it could be published. He also hiked around the Dayton area looking for a suitable site where a Bible College could be built. Speeches were given in nearby towns and churches. All in all, it was an exhausting week for him, as he traveled hundreds of miles over rough 1925 Tennessee roads, and spoke to nearly 55,000 people. On Sunday afternoon, July 26, after speaking at church, he died quietly during an afternoon nap.
Although a strong wave of popularity surged for Bryan among the common people, he had been deeply hurt by the vicious attacks of Clarence Darrow and the press. A close friend who had a lengthy conversation with him just before his death, said this:
“‘Four days after the trial ended I talked with him at some length, and he was even then quivering with hurt at the epithets which had been applied to him. He was a crushed and broken man.‘ ” George F. Milton, “A Dayton Postscript,” in Outlook, August 19, 1925, p. 551.
“By 1925, Henry Louis Mencken , was a tough, witty, cynical cigar-chomping newspaperman who had spent 15 years covering big-city aims and politics. That year the Baltimore Evening Sun sent him to the little rural fawn of Dayton, Tennessee to report on the trial of a science teacher named Scopes, whose crime was teaching Darwin’s theory of evolution.” Mencken’s dispatches were alternately sensible, satirical, condescending and cruel; they were widely reprinted all over the country. Mencken painted Bryan as a rabble-rousing hypocrite. ‘If the fellow was sincere,’ he wrote, ‘then so was P.T. Barnum . . He was, in fact, a charlatan, a mountebank, a zany without sense or dignity.’
“Although technically Bryan won the case, by the end of the trial he was a broken man. Darrow had assaulted him with a barrage of ridicule that left him utterly worn out and defeated. A few days later he died suddenly.
“But even when Darrow had finished, Mencken did not let up. If Bryan had survived his first stroke, Mencken’s’ memorial’ article would have given him another. Bryan’s whole career, he wrote: ` . . was devoted to raising half-wits against their betters, that he himself might shine.'” *Richard Milner, Encyclopedia of Evolution (1990), p. 298.
The savage attacks of Darrow, the street venders with their pictures of Bryan the monkey, the newspapers, wire services, radio broadcasts, apostate ministers, and all the rest; each had its effect. The tired old warrior now could rest from his labors.
8 – FALLOUT FROM DAYTON
THE APPEAL
Soon after the trial ended, the ACLU began the appeals process to overturn the Dayton conviction. Not happy with Darrow, the ACLU tried to shed him, but when their associate director, Forrest Bailey, wrote Scopes to drop Darrow, Scopes said No. Darrow had sat on the bench next to the worried young man during the trial and had been an encouragement to him. So a year later, Darrow appeared before the Tennessee Supreme Court to argue the appeal. On January 27, 1927, a verdict was handed down. Thanking Scopes for his friendship, Darrow then sent him a photograph of himself, with the following words written across the bottom: “Clarence Darrow with regards and affection to the man who helped make him famous, if not notorious.”
The Tennessee Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of the law, but reversed Scope’s conviction on the technicality that, when a fine is more than $50, it must be imposed by the jury and not the judge.
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