Summer for the Gods: The Scopes Trial and America's Continuing Debate Over Science and Religion

by Edward Larson

  Townspeople embraced the unfolding affair. “Previous to the consciousness that Dayton was gaining notoriety through Scopes, Rappleyea et al. there was a lot of bickering and dispute”—including assaults on some trial proponents, one journalist reported from Dayton, three days after Bryan and Darrow volunteered to participate. “But now that the trial has been put into the advertising class, monkey has become the most popular word in Dayton’s vocabulary.” Main Street merchants decorated their shops with pictures of apes and monkeys. One billboard featured a long-tailed primate holding a bottle of patent medicine; another pictured a chimpanzee drinking a soda. The constable’s motorcycle carried a sign reading “Monkeyville Police,” while a delivery van bore the words “Monkeyville Express.” Merchants toned down their displays after the Progressive Dayton Club passed a resolution “condemning the frivolous attitude being taken toward the evolution case by certain elements of the Dayton population,” but the fountain at Robinson’s drugstore still offered “simian” sodas and stray monkeys continued to appear in shops around town. At the same time, however, the club voted to raise a $5,000 advertising fund to promote business development during the trial. “Since Dayton had found her way into the headlines all over the country,” one club member commented, “I can not see why Dayton should not reap the benefits.”50

  Darrow’s entry into the case aroused some local protests, however. Countless Americans never forgave Darrow for his role in the Leopold-Loeb trial. “The fact that [this] and others of his cases were personal victories for himself does not by any means connote that they were also victories for the majesty and efficacy of the law,” the Memphis Commercial Appeal had commented earlier.51 Others distrusted Darrow due to his militant agnosticism; Malone was less well known, but rumored to be a Socialist. A group of prominent Daytonians asked Neal to decline aid from Darrow and Malone. Scopes’s original attorney, John Godsey, agreed with this position and soon bowed out of the case. Even Rappleyea, who hoped that the trial would promote a modernist Christian view of evolution rather than a materialistic one, did not want Darrow. “Dr. Neal accepted Darrow’s help in the case,” he told the press, “I wish he had not.” After asking numerous Daytonians about the matter, however, a Chattanooga Times reporter concluded that “the big majority look at this feature of the case as purely professional, and are ready to congratulate Judge Neal that he has succeeded in adding enormously to the advertising value of the trial by securing these two men of international reputation.” Scopes clearly agreed, telling the press at the height of the controversy, “I would certainly be an imbecile not to accept them.”52

  Neal stuck by Darrow for the time being, but differences in their approach to the trial surfaced almost immediately, and each later conspired to remove the other from the case. Whereas Darrow approached it as the culmination of his lifelong struggle against religious intolerance, Neal viewed it as a chance to relitigate his dismissal from the University of Tennessee faculty. “The question is not whether evolution is true or untrue,” Neal observed at the outset, “but involves the freedom of teaching, or more important, the freedom of learning.”53 This widely reported comment seemed to unleash a flood of letters and comments to Neal about the theory of evolution and its relationship to religion. “Even the Negro waiters in restaurants and the hotel bell-hops want to give me their views on evolution,” he soon complained to the press in a comment that betrayed a consciousness of status consistent with his references to Scopes as “boy.”54 Nevertheless, Neal maintained his focus on academic freedom. Losing all sense of perspective on this topic, he asserted just before trial, “Scopes’ case involves the most vital issue—human freedom—that has ever risen in America, transcending the fundamentals underlying the Civil War.”55

  Neal discussed his legal strategy with the press on the eve of the special grand jury proceeding against Scopes. “The fight will continue along the lines I have outlined,” he stated, “namely, the lack of power upon the part of the legislature to limit the inquiry of the truth in our high schools and universities.” Neal made a bow to those pressing him to defend the theory of evolution by adding, “While, as I have stated most emphatically, this is not a question of the truth or falsity of the Darwin theory, we think it advisable that the judge and jury, in order to secure a proper understanding of the law, should be enlightened in regard to the doctrine of evolution.” Godsey elaborated on this point by noting, “Our idea of evolution is that it is absolutely compatible and consistent with the story of creation in the Bible.”56 If so, the defense reasoned, teaching evolution would not violate the statute. Of course, this did not correspond with Darrow’s materialistic view of evolution—and the coherence of the defense case suffered accordingly. Neal and the ACLU would fight primarily for academic freedom and secondarily for a broader understanding of evolution and religion, themes that overlapped but never fully coincided with Darrow’s agenda. For his part, Scopes declined to give further interviews to the press, thereafter making only brief public appearances in controlled settings.

  The grand jury heard none of this when it met on the morning of May 25, only the prosecution’s prima facie case against Scopes. Rhea County was in Tennessee’s eighteenth judicial district; therefore the task of presenting this case fell on Tom Stewart of Winchester, Tennessee, the district’s no-nonsense attorney general. Stewart would become the only lawyer on either side to gain the universal respect of people associated with the case and later served Tennessee in the U.S. Senate. The Hicks brothers and Haggard assisted him throughout, as did Gordon McKenzie, a young Dayton attorney who supported the antievolution law on religious grounds. “I insist that the teaching of evolution in public schools is detrimental to public morals, storms the very citadel of our Christian religion, repudiates God and should not be permitted,” McKenzie told the press shortly before the grand jury met.57 Stewart took a different approach before the grand jury, however. He simply introduced the assigned textbook into evidence through the testimony of the school superintendent, read passages about human evolution from the text, and called on several students to testify that Scopes used the book to teach about human evolution. Even though Scopes taught both boys and girls, only his male students appeared in court. In all, seven students attended the grand jury session, but Stewart called on only three of them to testify. His entire case took less than an hour.

  Scopes had urged the students to testify against him, and coached them in their answers. They did not appear to understand the concept of human evolution, however, when questioned by reporters before the hearing. None of them knew the meaning of “anthropoid ape,” though several recalled Scopes talking about Tarzan of the Apes. “I believe in part of evolution, but I don’t believe about the monkey business,” one boy blurted out. “This was the crime established in the jury room,” one reporter lamented.58

  The presiding judge, John T. Raulston from near Chattanooga, pushed for an indictment. He clearly wanted the trial to proceed and looked forward to his role in it. Earlier, he had expedited the case by re-convening the grand jury in special session to indict Scopes, even though state bar officials questioned the legality of such a procedure. Then, before the grand jury reconvened, he offered to move up the trial date as well. Raulston’s judicial circuit sprawled across more than a half dozen rural counties in southeastern Tennessee, and he was not scheduled to hold court in Rhea County until autumn. Yet he publicly announced his willingness to begin the Scopes trial as early as mid June. Finally, Raulston all but instructed the grand jury to indict Scopes, despite the meager evidence against him and the widely reported stories questioning whether the willing defendant had ever taught evolution in the classroom.

  Following the prosecution’s presentation to the grand jury, Raulston read aloud the antievolution statute and the entire first chapter of Genesis. He then formally charged the jury: “If you find that the statute has been thus violated you should indict the guilty party promptly. You will bear in mind that in this investigation you are n
ot interested to inquire into the policy or wisdom of this legislation.” After conceding that the crime carried a low penalty, Raulston volunteered his opinion, “I would regard a violation of this statute as a high misdemeanor. And in so declaring I make no reference to the policy or constitutionality of the statute, but to the evil example of the teacher disregarding constituted authority in the presence of those whose thought and morals he is to direct.” So admonished, the all-male jury returned an indictment before noon. “There was not a woman in the courtroom,” one journalist noted. “Evidently the day of women has not arrived here.” The jury’s foreman, a retired mine manager, later told reporters that he personally accepted the theory of evolution but felt compelled to indict Scopes for violating the law.59

  Raulston’s eagerness to push the case reflected two factors. As a politician and elected office holder, Raulston craved publicity. As a conservative Christian and lay Methodist minister, he felt a deep sense of purpose in his work. Both factors were evident at the grand jury session when, after arriving late, he took time to pose for photographers and to give a statement to the press. “It has always been and is now one of the great passions of my life to ascertain the truth about all matters, especially relative to God,” he told reporters at this time, “but I am not so much exercised over the question as to whence man cometh as I am to whither he goes.”60 Accordingly, he ended up preaching to Darrow at the trial about the Christian plan for salvation but carefully refrained from expressing any views on human evolution. He apparently felt called by God to preside over this trial and would not let the opportunity slip through his hands.

  Raulston concluded the special court session by scheduling the trial to begin on July 10. “I have set a date when all universities and schools will be through their terms of school in order that scientists, theologians and other school men will be able to act as expert witnesses,” he explained. Both parties agreed to the early start. Raulston’s grandiose expectations for the trial lost touch with reality, but help to explain why he granted such latitude to the litigants. “My suggestion is that a roof be built over a large vacant lot,” he explained to assembled reporters, “and seats be built in tiers. At the very least, the place should seat twenty thousand people.” Scopes’s alleged crime bore the same penalty as the most minor liquor-law violations that Raulston heard in batches every day, but he set no such time limits on this trial. Bryan and Darrow would give speeches, he predicted. “In my estimation the trial is of such intellectual interest and importance that I believe it fair to give both sides ample time to present their cases,” Raulston observed. “Big issues are involved.”61

  Scopes and Neal waited all morning on the courthouse lawn for the grand jury to hand down its indictment. When it came, Scopes told reporters, “I am ready to go through with it.” Prodded for further comment, one journalist noted, Scopes “started to explain his theory that Darwinian evolution is not incompatible with the idea of an ever present, loving father of the universe. But [Neal] stopped him and led him down the street.” One listening juror remarked, “Young Whippersnapper—ought to be hanged on the spot.”62 Scopes promptly left town for a visit with college friends and family in Kentucky. Neal returned to Knoxville. Stewart and Raulston resumed their regular rounds traveling the judicial circuit. The parties spent the next six weeks preparing for what some pundits heralded as The Trial of the Century, a shopworn designation borrowed from the previous year’s Leopold-Loeb case. Anticipation mounted across the land.

  —CHAPTER FIVE—

  JOCKEYING FOR POSITION

  THE INDICTMENT of John Scopes inflamed the righteous ire of Columbia University’s influential president, Nicholas Murray Butler. “The Legislature and the Governor of Tennessee have with every appearance of equanimity just now joined in violently affronting the popular intelligence and have made it impossible for a scholar to be a teacher in that State without becoming at the same time a law-breaker,” he told June graduates at Columbia’s commencement. “The notion that a majority must have its way, whether in matters of opinion or in matters of personal conduct, is as pestilent and anti-democratic a notion as can possibly be conceived.” Denouncing fundamentalists and antievolutionists as the “new barbarians” storming the citadels of learning, Butler proclaimed, “Courage is the only weapon left by which the true liberal can wage war upon all these reactionary and leveling movements. Unless he can stand his ground and make his voice heard and his opinions felt, it will certainly be some time before civilization can resume its interrupted progress.”1

  Butler’s widely reported address served as a clarion call for educators and helped set the tone for liberal reaction to the upcoming trial. Fundamentalists represented a clear and present danger to progress that should be exposed and opposed in Dayton. Princeton president John Greer Hibben denounced the antievolution law as “outrageous” and the Scopes trial as “absurd.” Yale president James Rowland Angell expressed a similar viewpoint to the graduating class of his university, admonishing them that “the educated man must recognize and knit into his view of life the undeniable physical basis of the world.”2 The ACLU invited twenty prominent progressive educators to serve on a Tennessee Evolution Case Fund advisory committee to help raise money for the defense. All twenty accepted the invitation, including the two senior statesmen of American higher education, president emeritus Charles W. Eliot of Harvard and president emeritus David Starr Jordan of Stanford. From England, George Bernard Shaw condemned the “monstrous nonsense of Fundamentalism” and Arthur Keith confessed that he would like to see the Scopes “prosecution hanged on the spot.” When asked for his opinion of the Tennessee law, Albert Einstein replied, “Any restriction of academic freedom heaps coals of shame upon the community.”3

  When Scopes visited New York in early June to confer with ACLU officials, the fashionable Civic Club hosted a formal dinner in his honor. The event attracted an overflow crowd, which the New York Times characterized as “comprising almost every shade of liberal and radical opinion.”4 Commenting on Scopes’s visit, a reporter for the New York World observed, “Under the banner of liberalism, to the blaze of page headlines, with the aid of special interviews, posed photographs and human interest incidents, the conglomerate host of liberals is falling in about the lanky, grave-eyed Tennessee high-school teacher.” According to this reporter, the “army” surrounding Scopes included “feminists, birth-control advocates, agnostics, atheists, free thinkers, free lovers, socialists, communists, syndicalists, biologists, psychoanalysts, educators, preachers, lawyers, professional liberals, and many others, including just talkers.”5

  The ACLU endeavored to project an all-American image for Scopes during this visit. Except for the Civic Club dinner, which the ACLU needed to raise funds for the defense, Scopes remained mostly in his hotel room or private meetings. At public appearances and press interviews, he simply repeated his account of the trial’s humble origins: “Just a drug store discussion that got past control,” as he put it. Hounded by the New York press for a juicier news item and influenced by the people around him, Scopes occasionally revealed a more radical side. “I don’t know what the term ‘parlor Socialist’ means exactly, but I think that is what I am,” he confided to one reporter. When asked by another if he was a Christian, Scopes let slip, “I don’t know, who does?”6 Nevertheless, carefully staged press photographs near the Statue of Liberty in New York and on Capitol Hill during a return-trip stopover in Washington communicated the desired image to millions. “John Thomas Scopes,” the Washington Post reported, “yesterday stood before the original copy of the Constitution of the United States at the Congressional library and gazed long and wonderingly at the script upon which he hopes to vindicate his right to instruct the young of the land in accepted scientific principles.” Here he returned to the script. “I want to correct the impression that I hold nonreligious views and am in fact an agnostic,” he told the Post reporter. “While I am not a member of any church I have always had a deep religious fe
eling.”7

  To demonstrate scientific support for the cause, Scopes made public appearances in New York with three of America’s best-known evolutionary scientists: the paleontologist Henry Fairfield Osborn, the psychologist J. McKeen Cattell, and the eugenicist Charles B. Davenport. All three men helped shape the public response to the upcoming trial.

  Osborn had been wrangling with Bryan over the teaching of evolution for years and redoubled his efforts to promote the theory of human evolution and his views about its compatibility with Christian concepts of morality. “The facts in this great case are that William Jennings Bryan is the man on trial,” Osborn argued in a hastily compiled book dedicated to Scopes and published on the eve of trial. Science gave irrefutable evidence of human evolution, according to Osborn, and “evolution by no means takes God out the Universe, as Mr. Bryan supposes.” In this book, Osborn characterized the Commoner as blinded by “religious fanaticism” and “stone-deaf’ to scientific argument—” he alone by his own resounding voice drowns the eternal speech of Nature. “This became a common image of Bryan in the popular press: a typical political cartoon pictures Bryan’s gaping mouth overshadowing a quiet researcher above the caption, SCIENCE AND SHOWMANSHIP.“Bryan’s gospel is not truth,” Osborn maintained, ”it is an ill-starred state of opinion, disastrous to true religion, disastrous to morals, disastrous to education.“8 Clinging to an outmoded view of purposeful evolution that Darrow repudiated, Osborn publicly warned Scopes against “radicalism” at the trial and declined to appear as an expert witness for the Chicago agnostic.9 Nevertheless, he posed for pictures with the Tennessee teacher among prehistoric fossils at his American Museum of Natural History and kept up a steady drumbeat against Bryan in magazine and newspaper articles during June and early July.