Clarence Darrow: Attorney for the Damned
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The McNamara papers are at the University of Cincinnati, and the E. W. Scripps collection is at Ohio University in Athens. The Toledo-Lucas County Public Library maintains the papers of Samuel Jones and Negley Cochran. The University of Colorado has an excellent collection on the Western Federation of Miners.
The University of Michigan has many important collections that I used, including the Alex Baskin, Frank Murphy, Cash Asher, Joseph Labadie, Ossian Sweet, Josephine Gomon, Moses Walker, and Walter Drew collections, and a copy of the Ossian Sweet trial transcript. The Labadie collection’s acquisition of the notes of journalist Margherita Hamm, who covered the Haywood trial for Wilshire’s Magazine, offers a fresh perspective to the Steunenberg case.
The courthouse still stands, and the courtroom is much as it was, in Dayton, Tennessee. In the basement is an exhibit where the famous table from Robinson’s drug store is displayed. The John Neal and Sue Hicks papers at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville were helpful. The staff at the University of Texas, where the Edgar Lee Masters papers reside, were their usual expert, friendly selves.
Darrow’s papers and cases are scattered around the country, but the travel and time it took to tap these collections allows me to assure readers that there are no manufactured conversations or novelistic assumptions in this book. I relied first on official court transcripts and, only when they were not available, on edited versions of Darrow’s courtroom addresses, or on contemporary newspaper coverage. The correspondence, autobiographies, and memoirs of Darrow and his friends and associates supply the remaining quotations. In chronicling Darrow’s childhood, I relied on both Farmington and The Story of My Life. One is a novel and the other an autobiography, but I am confident that Darrow would agree that the selections I chose are accurate.
I also received help, in person or via e-mail or regular mail, from scholars and librarians at Colby College, the University of Wyoming, the Smithsonian Institution, the U.S. Supreme Court, the Eastern Washington State Historical Society, the Tennessee State Library and Archives in Nashville, the University of Pennsylvania, the Western Reserve Historical Society library, the Ohio Historical Society, Radcliffe College, the Indiana Historical Society, the American Jewish Archives, the Trumbull County Public Library, Cornell University, the University of Rochester, New York University, the City University of New York, Dartmouth College, the University of Oklahoma, the Nebraska State Historical Society, the University of Missouri, Harvard University, the Minnesota Historical Society, Smith College, Northeastern University, the University of Iowa, Indiana University, Indiana State University, the University of Illinois, the Cook County Clerk of the Circuit Court, Boise State University, the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, Idaho State University, Brigham Young University, Emory University, the University of Denver, Berea College, Southern Illinois University, the Colorado Historical Society, the University of Colorado, Pittsburg State University, Penn State University, the Sherman Library, the Siouxland Heritage Museums, and the University of Virginia. To all these archivists, I offer immense thanks.
I owe thanks, as well, to those who gave me a platform, a paycheck, a reference, permission, sound advice, a kindness, good company on the road, or the well-timed dose of wine, including Marjorie Farrell, Caledonia Kearns, Craig Baker, Jill James, Marie Reilly, the Anspach clan, Brian and Ellen Donadio, Carlos Mejia, Greg Moore, Randall Tietjen, Geoffrey Cowan, Kenneth Ackerman, Adam Clymer, David Stannard, Paul Morella, Edward Larson, Jim Lighthizer, Steve Jacobs, George Mitrovich, Susan Page, Carl Leubsdorf, Peter Blodgett, Kathy Kupka, Tom Coakley, Bob, Tom and Pete Hughes, Dick Ryan, Pat Poole, Stan Penczak, Scott Sherman, Bob Selim, Steve Kurkjian, Gerard O’Neill, Jack Beatty, Walter Robinson, Matt Storin, Anne Kornblut, Bill Tranghese, Tod O’Connor, Ken Burns, Doris Kearns Goodwin, Stephanie Cutter, James Alexander, Sandy Johnson, John Solomon, Bill Buzenberg, Bill Hamilton, Marith Fisher, Norm Ornstein, Tom Oliphant, David Maraniss, John Donovan, Roy Black, Douglas Brinkley, Alan Dershowitz, Peter Carlson, John Harris, John Kerry, Terry Anderson, Mike Riddick, Drex and Ann Knight, Beth Frerking, Janet Schrader, Douglas Trant, Lawrence O’Donnell, Dee Dee Myers, Charlie Sennott, Phil Balboni, Ray Ring, Rob Schlesinger, Laura Longsworth, Ben Loeterman, Jonathan Eig, David Shribman, David Morehouse, Michael Kranish, Judy Pasternak, Steve Braun, Joel and Lisa Benenson, Anita Weinberg, Carl Cannon, David Von Drehle, Doyle McManus, Marty Nolan, Bill Walker, Sharon Williams, Alex Beam, Barry Rosenbaum, Mary McGarvey, Jonathan White, Alan Partin and, most especially, Peter, Jake and Nora Gosselin and the late Robin Toner.
NOTES
ABBREVIATIONS IN NOTES
AB—Alex Baskin papers, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor
ACLU—American Civil Liberties Union papers, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.
ALW—Arthur and Lila Weinberg papers, Newberry Library, Chicago
BU—Leo Cherne papers, Boston University, Boston
BW—Brand Whitlock papers, Library of Congress
CD-CHI—Clarence Darrow papers, University of Chicago
CD-LOC—Clarence Darrow papers, Library of Congress
CD-UML—Clarence Darrow papers, University of Minnesota Law Library, Minneapolis
CDMFP-NL—Clarence Darrow and Mary Field Parton papers, Newberry Library
CESW-HL—C. E. S. and Sara Wood papers, Huntington Library, San Marino, CA
CESW-UC—C. E. S. and Sara Wood papers, University of California, Berkeley
ELM—Edgar Lee Masters papers, University of Texas, Austin
HDL—Henry Demarest Lloyd papers, Library of Congress
IHS—Idaho State Historical Society, Boise
JG—Josephine Gomon papers, University of Michigan
JK—John Kelley papers, Hawaii State Archives, Honolulu
KD—Karl Darrow papers, American Institute of Physics, College Park, Maryland
LAL—Los Angeles Law Library
MFP—Mary Field Parton papers, University of Oregon, Eugene
NAACP—NAACP papers, Library of Congress
OHL—Jessie Ohl Darrow scrapbook, Newberry Library
PP—Pinkerton Papers, Library of Congress
WD—Walter Drew papers, University of Michigan
WJB—William Jennings Bryan papers, Library of Congress
INTRODUCTION: JEFFERSON’S HEIR
1. Chicago Tribune, Jan. 21, 1893. Adjusted for inflation, $500,000 in 1893 would be worth $11 million today.
2. Edgar Lee Masters in the Mirror, May 16, 1907.
3. Chicago Tribune, Apr. 28, 1893.
4. President Woodrow Wilson would tell his contemporaries: “You may think Cleveland’s administration was Democratic. It was not. Cleveland was a conservative Republican.” New York Times, Nov. 27, 1894. Plessy v. Ferguson was decided in 1896. The income tax case was Pollock v. Farmers’ Loan & Trust Co. (1895). Monopolies were protected in United States v. E.C. Knight Co. (1895), and in Lochner v. New York (1905) the court struck down an 1895 New York law that limited the workday to ten hours.
5. Chicago Tribune, Apr. 28, 1893; Chicago Daily News, Apr. 28, 1893; Chicago Times, Apr. 28, 1893; Matthew Josephson, The Politicos (New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1938).
6. Chicago Times, Feb. 16, 1892, Feb. 24, 1893; William T. Stead, If Christ Came to Chicago (Chicago: Laird, 1894).
7. Brand Whitlock to Octavia Roberts, Aug. 2, 1898, BW; Darrow to Older, July 26, 1911, ALW.
8. Darrow to Jane Addams, Sept. 11, 1901, ALW; Mary Field Parton diary, MFP.
9. Forrest quoted in Stead, If Christ Came.
10. Chicago Times, Dec. 14, 1894. The visiting socialist was John Burns, and his comparison of Chicago to hell was widely cited around the turn of the century.
11. Darrow to Henry Demarest Lloyd, Dec. 28, 1891, HDL.
12. Chicago Tribune, Apr. 28, 1893; Chicago Daily News, Apr. 28, 1893; Chicago Times, Apr. 28, 1893; Lincoln Steffens, “Attorney for the Damned,” Saturday Review, Feb. 27, 1932.
13. Natalie Schretter, “I Remember Darrow,” unpublished
manuscript, Lilly Library, Indiana University; Francis Wilson, Stone interviews, CD-LOC.
14. Ruby Darrow, letters to Stone, CD-LOC; Steffens, “Attorney for the Damned.”
15. William Allen White, The Autobiography of William Allen White (New York: Macmillan, 1946).
16. Ben Hecht, Gaily, Gaily (New York: Doubleday, 1963).
17. Darrow, “The Rights and Wrongs of Ireland,” in Verdicts Out of Court, ed. Arthur and Lila Weinberg (Chicago: Quadrangle, 1963).
18. Darrow file, Louis Adamic papers, Princeton University.
19. C. E. S. Wood to Melvin Levy, Feb. 6, 1932, NAACP; Ruby Darrow, letter to Stone, CD-LOC; Herb Graffis to Elmer Gertz, Mar. 8, 1957, Elmer Gertz papers, Library of Congress; Lt. Com. L. Johnson to Stone, Aug. 26, 1940, Irving Stone papers, University of California, Berkeley; Arthur Garfield Hays, City Lawyer (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1942).
20. Kansas City Star, May 17, 1925.
21. Arthur Garfield Hays, Trial by Prejudice (New York: Covici, Friede, 1933).
22. Attorney General Thomas Stewart, in Scopes trial transcript; Kansas City Star, May 17, 1925; Arthur Garfield Hays, remembrance of Darrow, Unity, Darrow memorial issue, May 16, 1938.
23. Nathan Leopold, Life Plus Ninety-nine Years (New York: Doubleday, 1958).
24. Darrow to Mary Field Parton, July 4, 1913, CD-LOC; Mary Field Parton, journal, MFP.
25. Darrow remarks at sixty-first birthday banquet, Apr. 18, 1918; Darrow, “Is Life Worth Living?” Dec. 17, 1916, CD-LOC; W. W. Catlin to Wood, Aug. 5, 1907, Wood to Levy, Feb. 6, 1932, CESW-UC; S. J. Duncan-Clark, “Clarence Darrow’s Fight Against the Death Penalty,” Success, Dec. 1924.
26. Frederic Howe, Confessions of a Reformer (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1925); Victor Yarros, My Eleven Years with Clarence Darrow (Girard, KS: Haldeman-Julius, 1950); Steffens, The Autobiography of Lincoln Steffens (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1931); Clarence Darrow, The Story of My Life (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1932).
27. Darrow, The Story of My Life; Victor Yarros, remembrance of Darrow, Unity, Darrow memorial issue, May 16, 1938; Gertrude Barnum, “Darrow, the Enigma,” The Ladies’ Garment Worker, Nov. 1912; Harold Mulks, Stone interviews, CD-LOC; Mary Bell Decker, “The Man Clarence Darrow,” University Review, summer 1938; Darrow file, Louis Adamic papers, Princeton University; E. W. Scripps to Neg Cochran, Nov. 20, 1911, E. W. Scripps papers, Ohio University.
28. The World, Feb. 19, 1928; Mark Sullivan, Our Times, vol. 2 (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1927).
29. C. Vann Woodward, “What the War Made Us,” in Geoffrey Ward, The Civil War (New York: Knopf, 1990); Henry J. Abraham, Justices, Presidents, and Senators (New York: Rowman & Littlefield, 2007); Paul Johnson, A History of the American People (New York: HarperCollins, 1997); Frederick Turner, The Frontier in American History (New York: Henry Holt, 1920).
30. David Lilienthal, Darrow profile, The Nation, Apr. 20, 1927; John H. Holmes, remembrance of Darrow, Darrow memorial issue, Unity, May 16, 1938; Darrow, “Rights and Wrongs of Ireland”; New York Sun, Dec. 23, 1927.
31. H. L. Mencken, tribute to Darrow, Vanity Fair, Mar. 1927.
CHAPTER 1: REBELLIONS
1. The Eddy Family, Reunion at Providence to Celebrate the 250th Anniversary of the Landing of John and Samuel Eddy (Boston: J. S. Cushing, 1881); The New England Historical and Genealogical Register, July 1854.
2. Biographical History of Northeastern Ohio (Chicago: Lewis Publishing, 1893).
3. In his autobiography, Darrow suggests that George Darrow was one of the founders of New London. This is not true. It was founded in 1646 by men from Massachusetts. Frances M. Caulkins, History of New London (New London, CT: H.D. Utley, 1895).
4. Revolutionary War records show that several of Darrow’s ancestors, on both sides of his family, were Minutemen, KD; History of New London; Henry A. Baker, History of Montville, Connecticut (Hartford, CT: Case, Lockwood & Brainard, 1896); Merton Edwin Krug, History of Reedsburg and the Upper Baraboo Valley (1929); Revolutionary War Pension Applications for Ammirus and Jedediah Darrow, National Archives and Records Administration; John C. Fitzpatrick, ed., The Writings of George Washington from the Original Manuscript Sources, http://etext.virginia.edu/washington/fitzpatrick/index.html.
5. Darrow pension applications, National Archives and Records Administration; A. Tiffany Norton, History of Sullivan’s Campaign Against the Iroquois (Lima, NY: 1879); Fitzpatrick, Writings; Public Papers of George Clinton, First Governor of New York (Albany: State of New York, 1899); Daniel E. Wagner, Col. Marinus Willett: The Hero of Mohawk Valley (Utica, NY: Oneida Historical Society, 1891); The New England Historical and Genealogical Register, Oct. 1849, July 1854, Apr. 1868; Record of Service of Connecticut Men in the War of the Revolution (Hartford, CT: Adjutant-General’s Office, 1889).
6. Commemorative and Biographical Record of Columbia, Sauk and Adams Counties, Wisconsin (Chicago: Ogle, 1901); Krug, History of Reedsburg. Sarah is listed as Sarah Melona on Ammirus’s application for a Revolutionary War pension, but as Sarah Fisher in Krug and the Commemorative and Biographical Record, and as Sarah Fisher Malona and Sarah Malona Fisher in yet other sources. See Darrow collections at the Newberry Library and, for learned speculation on this and other matters, the online genealogy of the Darrow family compiled by Dean Hagen, one of George Darrow’s descendants. It contains a long letter on family history, written in 1923, by Clarence’s brother Everett.
7. Ammirus Darrow was known as Amarius, Amirus, and Ammiras, and his grandson as Ammirus and Amirus. For simplicity, I refer to the elder as Ammirus, and the younger as Amirus. Untitled reminiscence of Sarah Darrow, KD.
8. Grandfather Jedediah and several of his children settled in the Kinsman area as well. Chicago Daily Chronicle, Apr. 25, 1904; Chicago Tribune, Apr. 24, 1904; Darrow family records, KD; U.S. census, 1860; Clarence Darrow, Story of My Life and his short story “The Black Sheep,” CD-LOC. The University of Michigan “Catalogue” for 1864 credits Amirus with a BA from Cleveland University but does not give the date; the Ohio school, however, operated for only two academic years, from 1851 to 1853. The alumni record of the University of Illinois, in 1913, lists Cleveland as the place of Mary Darrow’s birth in 1852.
9. Freeman was found guilty, but Seward convinced the state supreme court to grant him a new trial. The prisoner died in jail in 1847, of tuberculosis, before he could be tried again. An autopsy showed a diseased brain. At the time of Darrow’s birth, Seward was a leading candidate for the Republican nomination for president, which he lost to Abraham Lincoln. He served in Lincoln’s wartime cabinet as secretary of state, survived an assassination attempt by the plotters who killed the president, and went on to negotiate the treaty in which the United States acquired Alaska from Russia. His argument in the Freeman case was included in Seward’s Works and in Hall’s book (both cited below), and in pamphlets and collections of oratory of the day. It is unlikely that Amirus and Clarence did not know of it. Seward, The Works of William H. Seward (New York: Red-field, 1853); Benjamin Hall, The Trial of William Freeman (Auburn, NY: Derby, Miller, 1848).
10. In the years after Darrow’s death, his son Paul spun a colorful but unlikely tale in which Amirus conveyed fugitive slaves under loads of hay in midnight wagon rides, with toddler Clarence at his side. The country lanes of the Western Reserve were indeed an important link in freedom’s railroad across Lake Erie to Canada, but the Darrow name does not appear in the surviving records of the movement. Given the clandestine nature of the work, however, that is not determinative. Darrow and Paul also claimed that Amirus was a friend of the militant abolitionist John Brown. It is possible, as Brown’s son John Jr. was then living in nearby West Andover, Ohio, and helped gather men and arms for his father’s raid on Harpers Ferry. But there is also evidence that the Darrows exaggerated the relationship. In addition to embellishing Paul’s dubious account of the midnight wagon rides, Irving Stone conveyed, uncritically, a family tale in which Brown tells the solemn Clarence, age five, t
hat “the Negro has too few friends; you and I must never desert him.” Brown was long dead when Darrow turned five in 1862, and critics pointed this out. Lilienthal, Darrow profile, The Nation, Apr. 20, 1927; Charlotte Kinney, “Clarence Darrow As He Is,” Psychology, Aug. 1932; Darrow, Farmington (Chicago: A. C. McClurg & Co., 1904); Darrow, Story of My Life; Irving Stone notes on interview with Paul Darrow, CD-LOC; Wilbur H. Siebert papers on the Underground Railroad, Ohio Historical Society.
11. University of Michigan, “Catalogue,” listing of “Students of Law,” 1864.
12. It is not surprising that this champion of the damned was, in his adult years, a Chicago Cubs fan. Darrow, Farmington and Story of My Life; Darrow, “Response to Birthday Greetings” and “The Myth of the Soul” in Weinberg, Verdicts; Darrow family records, KD; Akron Times-Press, Mar. 15, 1938; Cleveland Plain Dealer, Apr. 18, 1937; Darrow to James Kennedy, Mar. 21, 1925, Ohio Historical Society; Chicago Daily News, May 20, 1925; Darrow, “Attorney for the Defense,” Esquire, May 1936; Darrow closing address, Arthur Person trial, Apr. 24, 1920.
13. Darrow, Farmington and Story of My Life; Darrow, “Black Sheep”; Akron Times-Press, Mar. 15, 1938; Darrow to Julia Porter, Kinsman Library, Feb. 17, 1932; Jenny Darrow interview with Stone, CD-LOC; Darrow to Kennedy, Mar. 21, 1925; Chicago Tribune, Nov. 8, 1924; Chicago Daily News, May 20, 1925.
14. Darrow, Farmington and Story of My Life; Ohio Secretary of State, annual report, results of Oct. 9, 1883, election; Darrow family records, KD.
15. When asked, as an adult, why he didn’t eat chickens, Darrow replied, “They could never make up their minds.” Darrow, Farmington and Story of My Life; Darrow, “Black Sheep”; Ruby Darrow letters to Stone, CD-LOC; Chicago Daily News, May 20, 1925; Darrow testimony, Commission on Industrial Relations, 1915.
16. The family correspondence from the summer of Emily’s death is in the Karl Darrow papers. Darrow, Farmington and Story of My Life; Akron Times-Press, Mar. 15, 1938; Cleveland Plain Dealer, Apr. 18, 1937; Darrow, Stone, and Weinberg erroneously give Darrow’s age as fourteen when his mother died.