On this date a century ago, the trial of John Scopes began in Clarksville, Tennessee. The Scopes Monkey Trial, as it became known, was a national sensation at the time, given fodder for many books, and was the source material for the play, and later film, Inherit The Wind. How the case is now remembered in many ways erases the nuances and complexity of the issues and people involved.
I first wrote about the case in 2015, with an update in 2022. At the time of the 2015 post there were still some efforts to insert creationism into public school curriculum. Those efforts seems to have ceased, but evolutionary biology now appears under assault from different quarters, it seems an appropriate date on which to post again.
------------------------------------------------------Rather than the often repeated adage that the victors write the history of an event, the story of anything is actually determined by the unswerving adoption of one version of it, and the telling of that version by a determined cadre of writers. In time, the version with the most persistent adherents becomes the “truth.” – David & Jeanne Heidler in Henry Clay: The Essential American (2010)
Seeing the play and, later, the movie, I accepted its narrative of the forces of enlightenment, reason, heroism, and tolerance (represented by Spencer Tracey in the movie, playing a character based on Clarence Darrow) against the forces of narrow-mindedness, mean-spiritedness, repression, and unthinking old-fashioned religion (represented by Frederic March playing a character based on William Jennings Bryan); a morality play of liberal versus conservative written during the McCarthy years. The play is still staged frequently by regional theaters (here’s a recent Wisconsin production), has gone through several Broadway revivals, most recently in 2007, with Christopher Plummer and Brian Dennehy. There was even a London production, in 2009, with Kevin Spacey. In most cases, it is widely accepted by audiences as historically accurate.
It was only years later, prompted by reading Edward Larson’s Summer For The Gods and doing related research that I appreciated how much more complex and interesting the real story was. American history is much more fascinating and instructive when you don’t try to neatly shoehorn it into boxes labeled “liberal,” “conservative,” “progressive,” and “reactionary” as Inherit The Wind did, aided by influential mid-20th century historians and literary critics such as Richard Hofstadter. Throughout our history, you’ll see prominent people with constellations of political views that are unrecognizable in today’s categories (see Sam Houston as an example). I support the teaching of evolutionary theory but the full story behind the Scopes Trial is more interesting than the caricature of Inherit The Wind and, as I learned, the main character in this drama, William Jennings Bryan, would not neatly fit into any political classification in modern-day America.
The Background
Dayton in 1925
At the same time, battles were heating up between Darwinists and some religious denominations over the teaching of evolution. State legislative fights over its inclusion in educational curriculum became common.
Legislative efforts barring the teaching of evolutionary theory were successful in a small number of states, including Tennessee, which passed its law in early 1925. It was part of a larger package of laws in a massive education reform bill that laid the foundation for state-supported public schools. It was signed into law by progressive Governor Peay. Violation of the ban on teaching evolution carried a $100 fine, but no jail. Bryan supported the bill, but unsuccessfully lobbied against having any fine attached to violating the evolution provision, though no one at the time expected any prosecutions under the statute.
John Scopes
Dayton was a small town in East Tennessee, and part of the only Republican enclave in the state. Bryan won every southern state in each of his three presidential runs, but never carried Rhea County where Dayton was located. The town was also heavily Methodist in a state dominated by Baptists (the Baptist Convention, meeting in Memphis just before the trial, refused to add an anti-evolution plank to the denomination’s statement of faith).
Once the ACLU came into the case, Bryan — the country’s leading opponent of the teaching of evolution — agreed to become part of the prosecution’s team. And through some very complicated machinations, Clarence Darrow, the most famous criminal defense lawyer in America, joined the defense team. When this happened, the trial became the biggest story in the country, and was also followed heavily in Europe. A deluge of reporters descended on Dayton.
Why Evolution? Why Bryan?
In 1925, 65-year-old William Jennings Bryan was well known to every American, having run unsuccessfully three times as the Democratic Party’s presidential candidate (1896, 1900, and 1908). A remarkable orator — his “Cross of Gold” speech at the 1896 convention secured him the nomination — he is considered to be the first populist to run for President. In 1913, Woodrow Wilson appointed him Secretary of State, a post he resigned in 1915 when the pacifist Bryan became convinced Wilson was maneuvering the country into entering the First World War.
Bryan campaigned successfully in support of four constitutional amendments: direct election of senators, the Federal income tax, women’s suffrage, and Prohibition. So why, in the 1920s, did he undertake leadership of the crusade against the teaching of Darwinism, and why did he think it was consistent with his other views? From today's perspective, it doesn't seem to make sense.
Bryan believed in “popular sovereignty", always campaigning against big business and the banks and on behalf of the common people. When the Supreme Court overturned some of the early progressive labor laws, Bryan supported (unsuccessful) legislation to limit judicial review, and backed the Progressive use of popular referendums. He believed the people were entitled to what they wanted, and saw the evolution issue in the same way. According to Bryan:
It is no infringement on their freedom of conscience or freedom of speech to say that, while as individuals they are at liberty to think as they please and say what they like, they have no right to demand pay for teaching that which parents and the taxpayer do not want taught.
The concerns Bryan raised in 1904 were reinforced by recent events. The slaughter of WWI appalled Bryan. He saw German militarism as Darwinian selection in action; this was a common view at the time, as reflected in the words of Vernon Kellogg in his book Headquarters Nights: “Natural selection based on violent and fatal competitive struggle is the gospel of the German intellectuals.”
Bryan saw the modernist wing of the Progressives, led by Woodrow Wilson, willing to go down the same road. It is striking to see how much Darwinism was in the air of politics at the time. Wilson’s key 1912 campaign speech, “What is Progress?” espoused a Darwinian approach to American government:
Now, it came to me, as this interesting man talked, that the Constitution of the United States had been made under the dominion of the Newtonian Theory. You have only to read the papers of the The Federalist to see that fact written on every page. They speak of the “checks and balances” of the Constitution, and use to express their idea the simile of the organization of the universe, and particularly of the solar system — how by the attraction of gravitation the various parts are held in their orbits; and then they proceed to represent Congress, the Judiciary, and the President as a sort of imitation of the solar system. …
Living political constitutions must be Darwinian in structure and in practice. Society is a living organism and must obey the laws of life, not of mechanics; it must develop. All that progressives ask or desire is permission — in an era when “development” “evolution,” is the scientific word — to interpret the Constitution according to the Darwinian principle; all they ask is recognition of the fact that a nation is a living thing and not a machine. [emphasis added]
If such people were lower animals, we would probably kill them off to prevent them from spreading … Humanity will not allow this, but we do have the remedy of separating the sexes in asylums or other places and in various ways preventing intermarriage and the possibility of perpetuating such a low and degenerate race.The prior edition of Hunter’s textbook had contained language specifically citing biological deficiencies of African races.
Eugenics had many scientist adherents in the United States and England who believed that the human race could be made better via selective breeding to create a better and more progressive world. One of those scientists, A.E. Wiggam, expressed the connection between the teaching of evolution and eugenics:
“until we can convince the common man of the fact of evolution … I fear we cannot convince him of the profound ethical and religious significance of the thing we call eugenics.”
Holmes
Within a few years, WWII and the revulsion against Nazi law and experimentation would put an end to the eugenics movement (though a revival of eugenics under another name seems to be arising based upon modern advances in biology and genetics). The heyday of the eugenics movement and the rise of anti-evolutionary forces led to the Dayton trial in 1925. Bryan expressed his pithy view of the whole matter when commenting on the latest discovery of purported early human remains: “Men who would not cross the street to save a soul have traveled across the world in search of skeletons.” In his closing argument at trial, Bryan explained that evolutionary theory:
". . . if taken seriously and made the basis of a philosophy of life, it would eliminate love and carry man back to a struggle of tooth and claw."
The Trial and its Aftermath
The
ACLU and Darrow differed on trial strategy. The ACLU considered
it a free speech case, but that was not Darrow’s interest. As a
militant atheist who did not believe in free will, he wanted to use the
trial as an opportunity to directly assault Christianity and its beliefs
about the creation of the universe and the human race. This discomfited
many ACLU supporters, but — through a complicated series of maneuvers — Darrow seized control of the defense strategy and was
cleverly able to lure Bryan to the stand, where he cross-examined him
viciously on Biblical inconsistencies. (Darrow might have been a
terrible person, but you’d want him defending you if you were on trial).
This prompted a Congregational Church official who supported the legal
challenge to send a note to the ACLU:
Five days after the end of the trial, William Jennings Bryan passed away while taking his afternoon nap.
“May I express the earnest opinion that not five percent of the ministers in this liberal denomination have any sympathy with Mr Darrow’s conduct of the case.”Edwin Mims of Vanderbilt University, another supporter of the ACLU, wrote:
“When Clarence Darrow is put forth as the champion of the forces of enlightenment to fight the battle for scientific knowledge, one feels almost persuaded to become a Fundamentalist.”The jury quickly returned a verdict finding Scopes guilty. Bryan offered to pay the $100 fine, and the local school board offered to renew his contract for another year, but Scopes decided to go to graduate school, attending the University of Chicago and becoming a petroleum engineer. The fine was ultimately rescinded and the Butler Act was repealed in 1967.
Five days after the end of the trial, William Jennings Bryan passed away while taking his afternoon nap.
In today's Wall St Journal, playwright David Mamet has a piece with observations on Inherit The Wind, noting that:
The play and film were intended as ripostes to the House Un-American Activities Committee’s persecution of those accused of communist sympathies.
As such, the play had to tailor the story from 1925 into a narrative usable for a 1950s audience. It also reflects intellectual currents of the mid-century:
"Inherit the Wind” paints the contest between reason and religion as zero-sum. Religion is a metaphysical concept. It can’t be observed as part of the physical world. But a little reflection must suggest that reason is equally metaphysical. Where does it exist save for in the human mind, which can be inaccurate, uninformed, depraved or plain wrong, and in which “the reasonable” changes through maturity and over time.
The truth is both are necessary.
The factors potentially mitigating the horrors wrought by our corruptible human feelings, and our equally defective reason are two. One is religion, which is to say our avowal of our imperfection. The other is the law, the attempt to codify religious intuition mechanically. There will always be an unresolved remainder in an arbitration between justice and fairness, reason and folly. This dissatisfaction is the human condition, the subject of the actual drama, and that which differentiates it from pageant, propaganda or mere entertainment. The hero of “Inherit the Wind” is Darrow but at the play’s end, he has learned nothing. And, so, neither have we.
As Mamet points out, reason and faith operate in different ways. I've read articles in which it is said that Saint Aquinas should be read to understand how faith and reason can be reconciled. I don't think they need to be as each stand on their own. They may overlap at times but they also exist parallel to each other. One can understand a reasoned analysis and nonetheless have faith in a certain outcome. I don't feel any need to reconcile those aspects. They just exist.
