Clarence
Seward Darrow grew up the son of coffin-maker
Americus Darrow, the village atheist and eccentric in the small, former
abolitionist stronghold of Kinsman, Ohio.
Clarence is bequethed "a nonconforming spirit, a skeptical
mind,
and freelance politics that drifted toward cynicism." His oratorical
skills are already in evidence by his early teens, when he participates
in town
debates on the issues of the day-- always arguing the negative, and
always
winning. In At the century's end, Darrow—by this time a
committed
determinist and agnostic—was a fixture in John Scopes called Darrow “the best read man
I
have ever
known” ( After a long career of celebrated cases,
including—especially—his defense the year before of two, young genius
thrill
killers, Leopold and Loeb, Darrow by 1925 ranked as the most famous
lawyer in
the country. In the pre-television,
newspaper world, words mattered more than images. People appreciated
oratorical
skills; whole speeches were heard and were read—not just sound bites.
The
ability to use words well still could make one a hero in the 1920s, the
decade
of Ruth and Lindbergh, a time that was the Age of Heroes. Clarence
Darrow, the
“sophisticated country lawyer,” was, when the Scopes trial opened in The Scopes case was a dream-come-true for
Clarence
Darrow. In his autobiography, The
Story of My Life, admits that as soon as heard William Jennings
Bryan had
joined the prosecution team, “at once I wanted to go.”
(SOL, 249)
On a speaking tour in So irresistible was the chance to battle
“the idol
of all
Morondom” (SOL, 249) that Darrow felt compelled “for the first, the
last, the
only time in my life” to volunteer his services in a case.
(SOL, 244)
The ACLU leadership was decidedly less enthusiastic about
Darrow’s
participation in the case than was the famous defense lawyer himself,
and
accepted him on the defense team reluctantly, when John Scopes
“insisted on
having him as a defender.” ( Darrow’s interest in the
evolution-creationism
issue began
well before Darrow’s
questions
for It wasn’t just the physical law-defying
aspects of
fundamentalism, however, that bothered Darrow.
He saw it as “the sanctifier of bigotry, narrowness,
ignorance,
and the
status quo.” (KT, 358) “Religious
fanaticism,” Darrow believed, “has always hampered” education. (CD, 249)
In 1925, “the sharpshooters of bigotry were picking off
its
victims in
our schools and colleges day after day.” (CD, 276) Darrow considered himself something of an
amateur
scientist—and boasted of his knowledge of things scientific. “For a lawyer, I was a fairly grounded
scientist,” he declared in The Story of My Life.
“I had been reared by my father on books of
science,” he recalled. “Huxley’s books
had been household guests with us for years, and we had all of The theory of evolution fit well into
Darrow’s
pessimistic
philosophy of life. He saw abundant
evidence of pain and uncaring cruelty in the world, much as People clung to the myths of Genesis, Darrow
wrote, because
they wanted to believe “that man is a being set apart, distinct from
all the
rest of nature.” (VooC, 427)
This desire sprung, in his opinion, from
“hopes and fears, and...primitive conceptions of undeveloped minds.” (VC, 427)
The men who wrote Genesis can hardly be faulted for
believing as
they
did, but Darrow expressed surprise that any “intelligent person” could
still
accept their words as true. “The Bible
is not a book of science,” Darrow noted.
“The men who wrote Genesis believed, of course, that this
tiny
speck of
mud we call the earth was the center of the universe, the only world in
space,
and made for man, who was the only being worth considering….Everyone
today
knows that this conception is not true.”
(VooC, 433) Christians, he felt, found evidence of
intelligent
design
where none existed. They “obsessed for
many years” over the famous “watchmaker” argument of Paley, believing,
as he
did, that the wondrous complexity of nature could no more be a product
of the
chance operation of physical laws than could a watch found lying in a
desert. Darrow dismissed such
speculation, finding “no implication that some intelligent power must
have
made” these impressive—and well-adapted—designs of nature. The origin
of the universe—“if
it had” an orgin—was, for Darrow, the agnostic, “a mystery” and would
remain
one forever. Darrow claimed to sympathize with took great
comfort in the
Bible and the belief that a God existed who watched over the universe. “I would be pretty near the last one in the
world to do anything to take it away,” he said.
“If anybody finds anything in this life that brings them
consolation and
health and happiness I think they ought to have it.”
(IS, 440)
Meeting before the Scopes trial with local prosecutors at
the
Hicks firm
in If Bryan and the fundamentalists relied too
much
on the
literal pronouncements of the Bible, Darrow might be faulted for
accepting too
unqualifiedly the impartiality of science and the soundness of its
conclusions. He seemed not able to fully
appreciate that science is a game in which old truths constantly give
way to
new ones, and evidence that supports conventional scientific wisdom is
often
uncritically accepted. Like many other
evolutionists of his day, for example, Darrow accepted the “Piltdown
Man” as
virtual proof of man’s common ancestry with apes. It
later turned out to be a hoax—and a rather
crude one at that. Shortly after arriving in Dayton in July
1925,
Darrow
proclaimed, “Scopes isn’t on trial; civilization is on trial.” Civilization on trial?: the notion was
ludicrous, of course. Free thought in
America did not depend on the acquittal of a public school teacher in
Tennessee; humanizing institutions did not hang in the balance. As absurd as the ban on teaching evolution in
state schools might be, it did not prevent the theory from being
discussed in
books, speeches, or private schools—nor did it require the teaching of
any
doctrine contrary to the best thinking of modern science.
Moreover, the law probably would not have
been enforced, had the ACLU not encouraged a test case attacking its
validity. If not allowing the science
education one might wish for, the Butler Act could have been worse…. The New York Times called it “the most
amazing
courtroom
scene in Anglo-Saxon history.” The two
rival celebrities, in the open air of the courthouse yard before
thousands of
spectators, rose from their seats, glowered at each other, shook their
fists,
and traded insults. The ostensible
purpose of the Darrow’s calling William Jennings Bryan to the stand was
to
determine whether the self-proclaimed Biblical expert might shed light
on the
potentially relevant question of whether the Bible might be reconciled
with
Darwin’s theory. The real purpose was
humiliation. Contrary to most published accounts of the
dramatic event,
the idea of examining Bryan did not suddenly pop into Darrow’s head on
the
morning of July 20, 1925. The possible
tactic, according to John Scopes, had been under discussion at least
two days
earlier. Denied the right to call their
own experts to testify, Darrow realized that he might be able to use
Bryan to
make his points in a way that might command the nation’s attention. The Commoner’s ego knew no bounds, so Darrow
understood that Bryan might find the challenge to testify
irresistible—if only
his co-prosecutors did not stand in his way.
When the time came, Bryan dismissed the concerns of his
prosecution team
and took the stand willingly, subject only to his right to put Darrow
and other
defense lawyers on the stand as well. Darrow, jacketless and wearing his trademark
suspenders,
began his interrogation of Bryan with a quiet question: "You have given
considerable study to the Bible, haven't you, Mr. Bryan?" Bryan
replied,
"Yes, I have. I have studied the Bible for about fifty years." Thus
began a series of questions designed to undermine a literalist
interpretation
of the Bible. Darrow later described the questions as “practically the
same” as
those he had confronted the Commoner with two years earlier in the
Chicago
Tribune. He asked Bryan about a whale
swallowing Jonah, Joshua making the sun stand still, Noah and the great
flood,
the temptation of Adam in the garden of Eden, and the creation
according to
Genesis. After initially contending, "Everything in
the
Bible
should be accepted as it is given there," Bryan finally conceded that
the
words of the Bible should not always be taken literally. In response to
Darrow's relentless questions as to whether the six days of creation,
as
described in Genesis, were twenty-four hour days, Bryan said "My
impression is that they were periods." Bryan, who began his testimony calmly, stumbled badly under Darrow's persistent prodding. At one point the exasperated Bryan said, "I do not think about things I don't think about." Darrow asked, "Do you think about the things you do think about?" Bryan responded,
to
the
derisive laughter of spectators, "Well, sometimes." Both old warriors
grew testy as the examination continued. Bryan accused Darrow of
attempting to
"slur at the Bible." He said that he would continue to answer
Darrow's impertinent questions because "I want the world to know that
this
man, who does not believe in God, is trying to use a court in
Tennessee--." Darrow interrupted his witness by saying, "I object to
your statement" and to "your fool ideas that no intelligent Christian
on earth believes." After that outburst, Raulston ordered the court
adjourned. The next day, Raulston ruled that Bryan could not return to
the
stand and that his testimony the previous day should be stricken from
evidence. The press reported the confrontation between
Bryan
and
Darrow as a defeat for Bryan. According to one historian, "As a man and
as
a legend, Bryan was destroyed by his testimony that day." His
performance
was described as that of "a pitiable, punch drunk warrior." The
problem, on close examination of the transcript, lay not so much with
his own
poor mind—Bryan was no blithering idiot—but with a faith that defied
logic. It left him trapped, like “a dumb
animal.” When Judge Raulston mercifully ended the
examination of
Bryan, a large number of people rushed forward to congratulate Darrow. “Much to my surprise,” Darrow wrote in The
Story of My Life, “the great gathering surged toward me. They seemed to have changed sides in a single
afternoon.” (CD, 267) Feelings
of sympathy for his prey, if Darrow’s
account is believed, arose simultaneously: “I was truly sorry for Mr.
Bryan.” (CD, 267) The man he defeated, Darrow thought, was
only a
shell of the
person he once had been. “I could see
the rapid decay that had come upon him,” Darrow said.
Bryan, he believed, was a man of
“unchangeable convictions” who had come to Dayton “to get even with an
alien
world.” When he might have earlier
smiled or told a joke, he now “snarled and scolded.”
Darrow concluded that “the merry twinkle had
vanished from his eyes” and he had the look of “a wild animal at bay.” He expressed shock to see the former
zeal
and idealism of Bryan “turned to wormwood and gall through failure and
despair
and bigotry.” (CD, 276-77) Darrow, however, did not escape criticism
either.
Alan
Dershowitz, for example, contended that the celebrated defense attorney
"comes off as something of an anti-religious cynic."
As Kevin Tierney observed in his biography
of Darrow, there was indeed “something very cruel about the way in
which Bryan
was ravaged.” (KT, 370)
Some people went so far as to suggest, when
the Commoner died suddenly five days later, that the defense attorney
had
“cross-examined the helpless William Jennings Bryan into his grave.” (KT, 370) Darrow, despite the best efforts of some in
the
ACLU to oust
him, remained with the Scopes case until the defense’s final victory—if
it can
be called that—in the Tennessee Supreme Court.
As he ended his argument, applause broke out.
The court issued its opinion – months later,
invalidating the decision of the Dayton court on a technicality--not
constitutional grounds as Darrow had hoped. According to the court,
Scopes’s
fine should have been set by the jury, not by Judge Raulston. Rather
than send
the case back for further action, however, the Tennessee Supreme Court
dismissed the case with the comment, "Nothing is to be gained by
prolonging the life of this bizarre case." Writing his autobiography seven years later,
Darrow
predicted “that it will be only a few years before the senseless
statute will
be wiped from her books either by repeal or the decision of a final
court.” (CD, 276) (The
Tennessee General Assembly did, in fact,
repeal the Butler Act—but not until 1967.) The great defense attorney
believed
that he slowed, or even stopped, the anti-evolution movement in its
tracks. “There is now reason for feeling
confident,” he wrote, “that no more states will permit their fanatics
to place
them in the position of Tennessee.” (CD,
276) Some of Darrow’s more fawning
biographers, such as Irving Stone, tended to agree.
Stone declared in Clarence Darrow for the
Defense that Darrow ‘s examination of Bryan “dealt a deathblow to
fundamentalism.” (IS, 427) Many in the ACLU, on the other hand, believed after the Scopes trial that Darrow had seriously harmed the organization’s reputation. They thought that the defense’s self-indulgent and sometimes frivolous actions in the case made good newspaper copy, but unnecessarily alienated potential supporters of good science, especially in the South. |