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

  Table of Contents

  Praise

  Title Page

  Dedication

  PREFACE

  Introduction

  PART I - BEFORE ...

  —CHAPTER ONE— - DIGGING UP CONTROVERSY

  —CHAPTER TWO— - GOVERNMENT BY THE PEOPLE

  —CHAPTER THREE— - IN DEFENSE OF INDIVIDUAL LIBERTY

  PART II - ... DURING ...

  —CHAPTER FOUR— - CHOOSING SIDES

  —CHAPTER FIVE— - JOCKEYING FOR POSITION

  —CHAPTER SIX— - PRELIMINARY ROUNDS

  —CHAPTER SEVEN— - THE TRIAL OF THE CENTURY

  PART III - ... AND AFTER

  —CHAPTER EIGHT— - THE END OF AN ERA

  —CHAPTER NINE— - RETELLING THE TALE

  —CHAPTER TEN— - DISTANT ECHOES

  —AFTERWORD—

  NOTES

  - INDEX -

  Copyright Page

  Praise for Summer for the Gods

  “Edward Larson ... tells the Scopes story with clarity and energy.... His book may be among the best one-volume primers on an American intellectual twilight.”

  —Boston Globe

  “Larson’s work is a thoroughly researched, thoroughly readable retelling of the tale. It leaves no subplot or character untouched. And when one considers how powerful the tensions underlying events 72 years ago remain today, Larson deserves hearty thanks. He’s reintroducing us to vital history that too quickly transformed into fiction and myth.... The Scopes trial is still with us. Larson has elevated its presence from simplified myth to illuminating fact.”

  —Christian Science Monitor

  “Larson’s account is an unusually balanced and readable treatment of the Scopes trial and its complexities.... Even better is Larson’s ability to humanize the trial and make it a tale of human folly.... The book is a good read about an important and often misunderstood subject. For his achievement, Larson deserves high praise.”

  —D. G. HART, American Historical Review

  “Masterly ... The strength of this book lies in Larson’s careful construction of the trial’s timeline, his expert treatment of the case’s legal dimensions, and his painstaking analysis of how the Scopes legend grew.... These achievements fully justify the prizes this volume has received.”

  —Mark NOLL, Isis

  “Forget the Lindberg kidnapping trial, the Manson trial, or even the O.J. trial. The real trial of the century was the Scopes Trial, and, although much has been written about it, nothing comes close to the definitive history written by Edward J. Larson.”

  —Skeptic

  “Edward Larson tells the true story of the Scopes trial brilliantly, and the truth is a lot more interesting than the myth that was presented to the public in Inherit the Wind”

  —PHILIP JOHNSON, University of California-Berkeley and author of Darwin on Trial

  “Experts will learn much about the background and details of the Scopes trial; the general reader will be drawn into the trial as never before. Inherit the Wind, step aside!”

  —WILL PROVINE, Cornell University

  “A marvelous remake of the drama in Dayton. Summer for the Gods accomplishes the extraordinary feat of teaching us a good deal that is new about the trial and its significance, including the behind-the-scenes strategizing of the lawyers, the civil liberties stakes in the outcome, and the realities of its impact on the teaching of evolution in the United States.”

  —DANIEL J. KEVLES, author of The Physicists: The History of a Scientific Community in Modern America

  “Summer for the Gods is, quite simply, the best book ever written on the Scopes trial and its place in American history and myth. The tone is balanced; the research, meticulous; the prose, sparkling.”

  —RONALD L. NUMBERS, University of Wisconsin-Madison and author, The Creationists

  “Larson ... gracefully documents the history of Darwinism, the theory of evolution and the fits and starts through which evolution became pitted against the Bible and fundamentalist religion.... Bryan’s and Darrow’s ghosts still haunt us, and the Scopes trial still holds resonance, as we continue to litigate the role of religion in public life and the power of the state to prescribe what shall be taught in public schools.”

  —New York Times

  “Larson brings understanding and perspective to a thorny issue.”

  —Pittsburg Post-Gazette

  “Skillfully interweaves the historical with the legal ... A superbly balanced account, both in narrative as well as analysis.... Summer for the Gods provides a thoughtful, reasoned approach to comprehending a deep-rooted culture clash, which, although it might change with each generation, shows little sign of disappearing.”

  —Journal of Southern History

  “Larson unlocks the past and renders it gracefully accessible in a narrative style that is easy to follow, despite the complexity of the intellectual currents and counter-currents of his theme.”

  —Los Angeles Times

  “Larson’s narrative manages to convey the complexity of the legal issues as well as the drama of the event in a fluid and focused manner.”

  —Journal of American History

  “The real story of the Scopes trial, it turns out, is more interesting, more mischievous, and more perverse than the complacent received wisdom. A historian of science and a lawyer, Professor Larson has written a devastatingly good book.”

  —Michigan Law Review

  “Larson has done a wonderful job of writing an engaging yet scholarly account of the issues surrounding this trial.”

  —Choice

  “Larson writes with clarity, insight, and poignancy for our times as well as for this past history.”

  —Library Journal

  “Much more than a lively, informative piece of historical reconstruction and criticism: It is as relevant to present controversies as it would have been in the 1920s.... a scholarly, extremely well-documented, engrossing narrative that is accessible to a general audience.”

  —Bioscience

  “Magnificent reconstruction of the Scopes trial and its significance.”

  —Church History

  “A gripping narrative.”

  —Books & Culture

  “An engagingly written book that not only sets the record straight about the Scopes trial and the events surrounding it, but also shows how one of the most famous cases in U.S. judicial history became an enduring legend.”

  —America

  “Larson’s style will capture readers and pull them into the story.”

  —Church History

  “Summer for the Gods is a remarkable retelling of the trial and the events leading up to it, proof positive that truth is stranger than science.”

  —Amazon.com

  “Larson both challenges and enables history teachers to rethink their teaching of the Scopes trial, McCarthyism, and the role of popular culture in shaping perceptions of historical events.”

  —History Teacher

  “‘The most widely publicized misdemeanor case in American history.’ That is Edward J. Larson’s description of the ‘monkey trial’ in his 1997 Pulitzer Prize-winning Summer for the Gods: The Scopes Trial and America’s Continuing Debate Over Science and Religion. With that debate again at a rolling boil, that book by Larson, professor of history and law at the University of Georgia, demonstrates that the trial pitted a modernism with unpleasant dimensions against a religious fundamentalism that believed, not without reason, that it was
faithful to progressive values.”

  —Newsweek

  “Edward Larson’s training both in legal history and in the history of science serves him well in Summer for the Gods.... Larson unlocks the past and renders it gracefully accessible in a narrative style that is easy to follow, despite the complexity of the intellectual currents and counter-currents of his theme.”

  —The Los Angeles Times Book Review

  “Careful and evenhanded analysis dispels the mythologies and caricatures in film and stage versions of the trial, leaving us with a far clearer picture of the cultural warfare that still periodically erupts in our classes and courts.”

  —Booklist

  “The originality of his book arises in large part from its thoughtful, evenhanded treatment of both sides in the confrontation—and the seriousness with which he takes the opposing convictions about religion, science, and their relationship to the law that clashed in Dayton ... Larson’s account of the trial and the legal issues involved in it [are] particularly illuminating ... [He] provides a fascinating account of how the trial became the legend that was eventually passed on by Inherit the Wind ... [This is an] excellent book.”

  —The New York Review of Books

  “A Spencer Tracy film, Inherit the Wind, was based on the [John Scopes Trial] and has shaped popular memories of it. But, as Edward J. Larson shows in this Pulitzer Prize-winning book, the film’s sinister mood is misleading ... Larson artfully separates myths from realities to tell a more complicated and convincing story. He also summarizes the continuing efforts of Tennessee and other southern states to keep creationism on the curriculum and evolution off it.”

  —PATRICK ALLITT, Times Literary Supplement

  “This book has already won a Pulitzer Prize, but it’s worth calling attention to again.... Larson ... finds new things to say about the famous “monkey trial” of 1925 and says them well. Among other things, he shows how the trial helped to break down the longstanding intellectual accommodation between Darwinism and Protestant theology, highlights the tensions between celebrity lawyer Clarence Darrow and the rest of John Scopes’s defense team, and demonstrates how the enormously influential drama Inherit the Wind significantly warped the trial and its aftermath.”

  —LUTHER SPOEHR, Providence Journal-Bulletin

  In memory of my father, Rex Larson, a Darrowlike criminal lawyer

  and

  William H. Ellis, Jr., a Bryanesque attorney-politician

  PREFACE

  THE SCOPES TRIAL has dogged me for more than a decade, ever since I wrote my first book on the American controversy over creation and evolution. The trial only constituted one brief episode in the earlier book, yet people who knew of my work asked me more about that one event than everything else in the book combined—and they would tell me about the Scopes trial and what it meant to them. Over the years, their questions and comments led me to reflect on the so-called trial of the century. Finally, one of my colleagues, Peter Hoffer, suggested that I write a separate book solely about the trial and its place in American history. The idea made immediate sense. As a historical event and topic of legend, the trial had taken on a life and meaning of its own independent of the overall creation-evolution controversy. Indeed, this book is different from my earlier one in that they chronicle remarkably separate stories. Both are tales worth telling as stories of our time. Furthermore, no historian had examined the Scopes trial as a separate study in decades. I had access to a wealth of new archival material about the trial not available to earlier historians, and the benefit of additional hindsight.

  Many helped me to conceptualize, research, and write this book. A few also assisted me with my first book, particularly my former teachers and current friends Ronald Numbers and David Lindberg. Some I met in the course of my earlier work, such as Bruce Chapman, Richard Cornelius, Edward Davis, Gerald Gunther, Phillip Johnson, William Provine, George Webb, and John West. Others were my colleagues at the University of Georgia, including Betty Jean Craige, Thomas Lessl, Theodore Lewis, William McFeely, Bryant Simon, Phinizy Spalding, Lester Stephens, and Emory Thomas. Finally, I benefited immensely from ongoing advice and encouragement from my editors at Basic Books, Juliana Nocker, Steven Fraser, and Michael Wilde. My thanks go to all of them.

  Numerous institutions assisted me by providing research materials and support for this project. Among the sources for research material, I particularly want to acknowledge my debt to the American Civil Liberties Union, Bryan College, the Library of Congress, Princeton University Libraries, the Tennessee State Archives, the University of Tennessee Libraries, and Vanderbilt University Libraries. I owe a special debt to Carolyn Agger for allowing me access to the Fortas Papers. Early and ongoing support came from sources within the University of Georgia, including two Senior Faculty Research Grants from the Vice President for Research; a Humanities Center fellowship; summer support from my dean at the law school, Edward Spurgeon; and travel support from the chair of the history department, David Roberts. The Discovery Institute and the Templeton Foundation provided forums to discuss the ideas that went into this book. Finally, I especially enjoyed an opportunity to work on this project at the Rockefeller Foundation’s Bellagio Study Center. This book would not have been possible without such support.

  E. L.

  Bellagio, Italy

  November 1996

  INTRODUCTION

  IT STARTED OFF civilly enough. Darrow began by asking his world-famous expert witness, “You have given considerable study to the Bible, haven’t you, Mr. Bryan?”

  “Yes, sir, I have tried to,” came the cautious reply.

  “Well, we all know you have, we are not going to dispute that at all,” Darrow continued. “But you have written and published articles almost weekly, and sometimes have made interpretations of various things?”

  Bryan apparently saw the trap. If he assented to having interpreted some biblical passages, then he could scarcely object to others giving an evolutionary interpretation to the Genesis account of human creation. “I would not say interpretations, Mr. Darrow, but comments on the lesson.”

  The lawyerly game of cat and mouse had begun, but one in which the cat sought to kill his prey and the mouse had nowhere to hide. At 68, Clarence Darrow stood at the height of his powers, America’s greatest criminal defense lawyer and champion of anticlericalism. Three years his junior, the former Boy Orator of the Platte—once the nation’s youngest major-party presidential nominee and now leader of a fundamentalist crusade against teaching evolution in public schools—William Jennings Bryan remained a formidable stump speaker, although he lacked the quick wit to best Darrow in debate. This was no debate, however; it was a courtroom interrogation in which Darrow enjoyed all the advantages of an attorney questioning a hostile witness. Although it would become the most famous scene in American legal history, it did not occur in a courtroom. Fears that the huge crowd would collapse the floor forced the judge to move the afternoon’s proceedings onto the courthouse lawn, with the antagonists on a crude wooden platform before a sea of spectators, much like Punch and Judy puppets performing at an outdoor festival. Enterprising youngsters passed through the crowd hawking refreshments as Darrow began to question Bryan about various Old Testament miracles.

  “Do you believe Joshua made the sun stand still?” Darrow asked at one point, regarding the biblical passage that speaks of a miraculously lengthened day.

  “I believe what the Bible says. I suppose you mean that the earth stood still?” Bryan replied, anticipating the standard gibe against biblical literalism under a Copernican cosmology.

  Darrow feigned innocence. “I don’t know. I am talking about the Bible now.”

  “I accept the Bible absolutely,” Bryan affirmed. “I believe it was inspired by the Almighty, and He may have used language that could be understood at that time instead of using language that could not be understood until Darrow was born.”

  This rejoinder evoked laughter and applause from the partisan Tennessee
audience, yet Darrow had struck a blow; even a biblical literalist such as Bryan recognized the need to interpret some scriptural passages. Darrow drove the point home with further questions. “If the day was lengthened by stopping either the earth or the sun, it must have been the earth?”

  “Well, I should say so,” an exasperated Bryan sighed, and in so doing fell into another trap.