The Scopes Trial: A Brief History with Documents [Paperback]

There are three main parts to Moran's look at the Scopes Trial. Part One is Moran's "Introduction: The Scopes Trial and the Birth of Modern America," which consists of setting up the trial in the context of the issues of both the evolution controversy and the struggle against "modernity," a overview of the genesis of the test case and the key stages of the trial, and at look at the aftermath of the trial. The first two sections are a concise look at the history of the trial but it is the last section where Moran makes his mark looking at not only the how the evolution issues has reemerged in recent times as creationism, but also how the conflict represented issues of regionalism, ruralism, academic freedom, race, and gender.

Part Two: "The Scopes Trial Day by Day: Transcript and Commentary" abandons the distinct stages Moran set up in his introduction to look at the trial each day. What Moran provides are excerpts from the trial transcript and one or more newspaper accounts covering the trial. For example, the second day's proceedings find both a transcript of defense attorney Clarence Darrow's speech in defense of religious liberty and journalist H.L. Mencken's column "Darrow's Speech Great but Futile." The celebrated duel in the shade when Darrow cross-examined Bryan is presented in sections focusing on the whale swallowing Jonah, Joshua commanding the sun to stand still, the flood wiping out civilization, and the chapter of Genesis, followed by the New York Times story "Laughter at Bryan's Expense."

The part I most applaud is Moran's inclusion of most of Dudley Field Malone's reply to William Jennings Bryan on the fifth day on the issue of the admission of expert testimony from scientific experts, because that corrects what I consider to be the major flaw in Edward J. Larson's "Summer for the Gods: The Scopes Trial and America's Continuing Debate Over Science and Religion." Larson reduces Malone's speech, the oratorical highlight of the trial, to two paragraphs, one on the speech and the other on the reaction of the crowd. What he misses are that Malone's speech represents the position of reconciliation in which evolution and Genesis were seen as being compatible rather than contradictory. It is only under Judge Raulston rules against the scientific testimony that the Scopes defense is left with no other option but to put Bryan on the stand and hold him up to ridicule, ask for their client to be convicted, and start working on the appeal. While Moran pays even less attention to Malone's speech in his introduction, those who read it are going to be impressed by not only its oratorical flourishes but his arguments, which are the most reasonable articulated during the trial.

The final part of Moran's book looks at "The Scopes Trial and the Culture of the 1920s: The Documents." This includes seven cartoons on the trial and its participants followed by sections devoted to the issues Moran had set up earlier: race, educational freedom, the "New Woman," religious alternative, and the invasion of "outsiders." The highpoints in this section are W.E.B. Du Boi's article "Dayton IS America," Bryan's "Who Shall Control Our Schools?", a pair of letters from women in Tennessee supporting the Butler Act, and the Reverend John Roach Straton's "A Fundamentalist Defends Tennessee against Outside Invasion." Most of these documents are from 1925, although a few come earlier and later. If you were paying attention to the Scopes Trial that year these are what you would have been reading about in the press. One interesting choice is the section included from George W. Hunter's "A Civil Biology," the science textbook used at Dayton's high school, is not about evolution but rather about race and eugenics (but the evolutionary tree in Hunter that Bryan ridiculed is provided during his first speech).

For all of the documents Moran provides a brief introduction providing necessary background information and raising at least one question that readers can consider while reading each section. There are a series of photographs from the trial in the first part of the book, but neither of the shots I have seen of Darrow questioning Bryan on the platform outside the Rhea County Courthouse. I did my dissertation on the Scopes Trial and was impressed with how Moran edited the trial transcript because he includes not only the key arguments for each stage of the trial, but he also works in the most infamous exchanges between the lawyers. I can quibble on some of the selections from journalists (I always liked the coverage of the trial by the "Commonweal") and the editorial cartoons, but what is provided certainly performs the desired functions.

The biggest irony behind the Scopes Trial is that John Thomas Scopes never taught evolution in Dayton, Tennessee in 1925. He was substituting for the regular science teacher and as the school's football coach worked on plays with his boys. That was the main reason the defense did not allow Scopes to take the stand and when Howard Morgan was examined on the fourth day of the trial the young student had to be prepped on what was in the Hunter textbook (which, in another irony, was the mandated textbook selected by the state that had to be taught in class). But in the final analysis Scopes' innocence was a minor consideration in the clash of forces at Dayton, Tennessee in the summer of 1925, which Moran's book amply evidences.