In his crusade to rally the people against teaching evolution, Bryan was nearly omnipresent. He gave hundreds of speeches on the topic to audiences across the country, including major addresses to nine different state legislatures in the South and Midwest. Bryan pushed the attack in dozens of popular books and articles, beginning with major pieces in the New York Times and Chicago Tribune. His syndicated “Weekly Bible Talks,” carried in daily newspapers with a combined circulation of over 15 million readers, regularly belabored evolutionists. He personally lobbied countless politicians, school officials, and other public figures on the issue. “Forget, if need be, the highbrows both in the political and college world, and carry this cause to the people,” he declared.55 And the people responded.
Concern about the social and religious implications of Darwinism had been a secondary issue within the church for two generations, and although the rise of fundamentalism revived those concerns for some, it took Bryan to transform them into a major political issue. Even Bryan’s wife—his closest confidant, who did not share his enthusiasm on this issue—could not understand the response. “Just why the interest grew, just how he was able to put fresh interest into a question which was popular twenty-five years ago, I do not know,” she wrote in 1925. “The vigor and force of the man seemed to compel attention.”56 The view was much the same from Tennessee. “Bryan can provoke a controversy quicker than any other man in public or private life,” an editorial in the Memphis Commercial Appeal observed three months before the Scopes trial. “In a public address about two years ago Mr. Bryan saw fit to take a fling at the Darwinian theory. For several years prior to that day we had heard little about evolution.... But the Bryan criticism started another controversy, and evolution has become all but a national issue.”57 Two years earlier, the always hostile Chicago Tribune complained, “William Jennings Bryan has half the country debating whether the universe was created in six days.”58
Bryan wanted more than a heated debate, however; he wanted political reform, and this took time. Most states had part-time legislatures that only met in general session during the first few months of odd-numbered years. Kentucky was an exception, but when its antievolution bill died in 1922, proponents of such legislation had to wait until 1923 for their next shot at lawmaking. The legislatures of six different southern and border states actively considered antievolution proposals during the spring of 1923, with Bryan personally involved in most instances, but only two minor measures passed. Oklahoma added a rider to its public-school textbook law providing “that no copyright shall be purchased, nor textbook adopted that teaches the ‘Materialistic Conception of History’ (i.e.) the Darwin Theory of Creation versus the Bible Account of Creation.”59 The Florida legislature chimed in with a nonbinding resolution declaring “that it is improper and subversive to the best interest of the people” for public school teachers “to teach as true Darwinism or any other hypothesis that links man in blood relationship to any form of lower life.”60
The Florida resolution was important because Bryan suggested its language and later claimed that it reflected his “views” on the issue, with one significant exception. “Please note,” he explained, “that the objection is not to teaching the evolutionary hypothesis as a hypothesis, but to the teaching of it as true or as a proven fact.”61 Bryan also agreed with the resolution’s focus on human evolution. In his Menace of Darwinism speech, he stressed that “our chief concern is in protecting man from the demoralization involved in accepting a brute ancestry,” and conceded that “evolution in plant life and animal life up to the highest form of animal might, if there were proof of it, be admitted without raising a presumption that would compel us to give a brute origin to man.”62 Bryan asked that Florida legislators outlaw such teaching, however, rather than simply to denounce it as improper; but even on this point, the trusting Commoner added, “I do not think that there should be any penalty attached to the bill. We are not dealing with a criminal class.”63 Cautious legislators in Bryan’s adopted state compromised by unanimously passing an advisory resolution rather than a law, thereby avoiding any risk of a lawsuit over their action. Two years later, Tennessee legislators displayed less caution than their Florida counterparts—and less trust in teachers than Bryan—by opting for a criminal law on the subject, including a penalty provision, and applying it to all teaching about human evolution rather than solely to teaching it as true. These changes set the stage for the Scopes trial.
Antievolutionists began targeting Tennessee soon after the 1923 lawmaking season ended without a major victory. Bills to outlaw teaching evolution had died in committees of the Tennessee legislature that year, mostly due to inattention as Bryan and other antievolution leaders campaigned in other states. Now they focused on Tennessee and its neighbor, North Carolina, in anticipation of the 1925 legislative sessions. Bryan gave several antievolution speeches in the two states during this period, including a major address in Nashville on January 24, 1924, attended by most Tennessee state officials. Riley toured the region in 1923, 1924, and 1925, speaking widely in fundamentalist churches and calling on the faithful to drive Darwinism from public schools. The WCFA held major national conferences in both states, further arousing local interest in the topic. Billy Sunday scheduled massive popular crusades in the two states, and encamped in Memphis during the 1925 Tennessee legislative session. T. T. Martin, J. Frank Norris, and John Roach Straton also appeared on several occasions. As a result of these efforts, teaching evolution became a hot political issue in both states during the 1924 elections, with many Democratic candidates vowing to support “Bryan and the Bible.”
Tennessee offered a particularly promising target, and one that proved more vulnerable than North Carolina. Memphis, the state’s largest city, billed itself as “a Baptist stronghold, the citadel of the denomination,” and served as a hub for conservative Protestant publishing. 64 The city’s leading daily newspaper, the Commercial Appeal, could be counted on to endorse antievolution legislation. The state as a whole was solidly Protestant, with more than 1 million church members—nearly half of them Baptists—out of a total adult population of 1.2 million. 65 Governor Austin Peay, a popular Democratic politician known as The Maker of Modern Tennessee for his progressive reforms, described himself as an “old-fashioned Baptist” and often complained that some of the doctrines taught in public schools undermined religious faith.66 “Be loyal to your religion,” he once advised state college students, “scientists and cranks will seek in vain to better it. The Christian faith of our people is the bedrock of our institutions.”67
Furthermore, Tennessee had a sufficiently diverse population to raise tensions over recent developments in religion and popular culture. Indeed, Bryan opened his 1924 address in the state capital with the challenge, “I make my religious speech here because Nashville is the center of modernism in the South,” presumably referring to the influence of Vanderbilt University and the city’s nationally famous progressive cleric, James I. Vance.68 In addition, racial tensions tore at the seams of Tennessee society and exploded into race riots and Klan violence following the First World War. Antievolutionism promised a return to normalcy.
Local defenders of teaching evolution tried to stem the rising tide. Vance argued for a middle course between fundamentalism and modernism in his books and sermons, all the while pleading for tolerance. Nashville’s afternoon newspaper, the Banner, regularly denounced antievolutionism and sniped at Bryan’s motives. When the Commoner proposed forgiving war debts owned by European nations in exchange for their disarmament, for example, the Banner sneered, “Neglecting never an opportunity to secure publicity, out of which he has realized a large private fortune, the distinguished Florida gentleman late of Nebraska, William Jennings Bryan, has evolved one of his picturesque and absurd altruistic ideas.”69 Proposals to outlaw teaching evolution were the real target of this editorial, just as they prompted the Commercial Appeal to defend Bryan’s “honestly accumulated” wealth and publicize his angry deni
al, “I am not a millionaire.”70 State and local school officials sought to play down teaching evolution in the hope that the crusade would pass them by, but by 1925 this issue had gained too much momentum in Tennessee to be easily turned aside. A legislative confrontation was inevitable.
“Fundamentalism drew first blood in Tennessee today,” a January 20, 1925 article in the Commercial Appeal reported, “in the introduction of a bill in the Legislature by Senator [John A.] Shelton of Savannah to make it a felony to teach evolution in the public schools of the state.”71 A day later, John W. Butler offered similar legislation in the House of Representatives.72 Both legislators had campaigned on the issue and their actions were predictable. Butler justified his proposal on Bryanesque grounds: “If we are to exist as a nation the principles upon which our Government is founded must not be destroyed, which they surely would be if ... we set the Bible aside as being untrue and put evolution in its place.”73 Butler was a little-known Democratic farmer-legislator and Primitive Baptist lay leader. For him, public schools served to promote citizenship based on biblical concepts of morality. Evolutionary beliefs undermined those concepts. Driven by such reasoning, Butler proposed making it a misdemeanor, punishable by a maximum fine of $500, for a public school teacher “to teach any theory that denies the story of the Divine Creation of man as taught in the Bible, and to teach instead that man had descended from a lower order of animal.”74 Most of Butler’s colleagues apparently agreed with this proposal, because six days later the House passed it without any amendments. The vote was seventy-one to five. Although three of the dissenters came from Memphis and one from Nashville, the bill gained the support of both rural and urban representatives, including most delegates from every major city in the state.
The House action reflected overwhelming support for the general concept of limits on teaching evolution rather than any detailed consideration of the pending legislation, which Butler had drafted himself. About the only information on the bill that House members received was a free copy of Bryan’s 1924 Nashville speech, which did not offer any specific legislative proposal other than to proclaim that if Christians “cannot teach the views of the majority in the schools supported by taxation, then a few people cannot teach at public expense their scientific interpretation that attacks every vital principle of Christianity.”75 Bryan’s Florida antievolution resolution expressly incorporated this seemingly balanced restriction on teaching any theory of origins, but Butler’s bill dealt solely with the theory of evolution—and the distinction between the two positions was never discussed by Tennessee legislators.
In fact, for various reasons, no specific features of the proposal received a public airing prior to the House vote. First, the press failed to report the bill’s introduction, focusing instead on the earlier Senate proposal. Second, the House education committee recommended passage of the measure without holding a public hearing. At least one committee member did not even know of the committee’s action prior to the House vote but after mild protest supported the bill anyway. Finally, the House leadership scheduled the bill for final passage during an afternoon set aside for considering inconsequential and uncontroversial legislation. “Measures were ground out of the hopper with regularity,” the Nashville Banner reported regarding that afternoon in the House, “and with probably less debate than expressed at a session this far along in the life of the legislature.” As the afternoon session proceeded, the House postponed action on any bill arousing prolonged discussion. When the disgruntled education committee member asked to hold over the antievolution bill, Butler objected. “I do not see the need for any further talk,” Butler reportedly said, “as everyone understands what evolution means.” Another representative supported Butler by calling for an immediate vote, and the measure passed without further comment. At the time, this vote received even less attention within the chamber than the passage of a leash law for “egg-sucking dogs,” which at least generated laughter after one member asked how to distinguish which dogs suck eggs.76
The speedy House action apparently caught the public off guard. No letters to the editor for or against the Butler bill appeared in any major newspaper of the state prior to the House vote. A deluge of letters followed that action. Further, petitions to the legislature and newspaper editorials on the subject only began appearing after the House passed the bill. Of course, final enactment required action by the Tennessee Senate and governor, so plenty of opportunity remained to influence the outcome. By that time, proponents and opponents had thoroughly rehearsed the arguments that would capture the nation’s attention during the Scopes trial.
Opponents of the legislation went to work on the Senate. “It was noticed by me that the ‘anti-evolution bill’ was passed by the house of representatives yesterday,” one letter to the Nashville Banner observed. “Is it the intention of all those who advocate free expression ... to let this pass unprotested?”77 Clearly not, as scores of opponents wrote letters to state newspapers reflecting the outrage, even shame, undoubtedly felt and expressed by countless Tennesseans over the House action. “Let us not blow out the light as long as the student desires to learn,” one writer pleaded.78 “According to the greatest scientific authorities on earth, evolution is no longer regarded as a theory but an established fact,” another declared. “But the legislators persist in hearing the teaching of Billy Bryan, Billy Sunday and all the rest.”79 Comparisons to Galileo’s trial and Bruno’s execution were commonplace. “I fear we will never stamp out the evolution theory, for old Bruno was burned and old Galileo thrown in prison,” a sarcastic writer protested, “and yet the damnable round earth theory is still being taught.”80 The inevitable references to monkeys also appeared. “No one needs better proof of the truthfulness of Darwin’s theory than to visit Capitol Hill and view some its occupants,” a typical letter joked. “Someone said they sprang from monkeys and that one would be forced to believe they had not sprung very far.”81
Several state newspapers jumped into the fray at this point. “There is no reason why the discoveries of geology and astronomy should be challenges to Christian faith,” an editorial in the Nashville Tennessean advised.82 “The quicker this jackass measure is booted into a waste basket, the better for the cause of enlightenment and progress in Tennessee,” the Rockwood Times added.83 The Chattanooga Times reprinted an editorial declaring, “Perhaps if there is any other being entitled to share Mr. Bryan’s satisfaction at this Tennessee legislature it is the monkey. Surely if the human race is accurately represented by that portion of it in the Tennessee house of representatives, the monkey has a right to rejoice that the human race is no kin to the monkey race.”84
Tennessee’s modernist clerics, although vastly outnumbered by their fundamentalist counterparts, held influential pastorates in several cities and joined in condemning the antievolution bill. Indeed, one liberal preacher gave lawmakers such a tongue-lashing that, after a newspaper reprinted his comments, the House took the unusual step of passing a resolution denying them.85 Thirteen Nashville ministers, most of them either Presbyterians or Methodists, expressed their opposition in a petition to the Senate.86 Chattanooga’s leading liberal pastor, M. S. Freeman, began a widely publicized series of sermons on modernism by criticizing the proposed statute: “I believe that such laws emanate from a false conception that our Christian faith needs to be sheltered behind bars.”87 The modernist leader R. T. Vann, who played a lead role in opposing antievolution legislation in North Carolina, delivered an address in Memphis on the need for academic freedom in science education. “Now, granted that we may and must teach science in our colleges,” he argued, “this teaching must be done by scientists.... Neither priest nor prophet nor apostle, nor even our Lord Himself, ever made the slightest contribution to our knowledge of natural science.”88 Already, the three main tactics for attacking the antievolution measure had emerged: the defense of individual freedom, an appeal to scientific authority, and a mocking ridicule of fundamentalists and biblical literalism; late
r, they became the three prongs of the Scopes defense.
Senators readily responded to these arguments. Just two days after the House passed the Butler bill, the Senate judiciary committee voted down Shelton’s antievolution measure with the comment that the legislature should not “make laws that even remotely affect the question of religious belief.”89 Six days later, the committee also rejected the Butler bill. Caught in the middle between its judiciary committee and the House, the full Senate vacillated. First, it considered a move to kill the Butler bill outright, then it adopted a motion to schedule the legislation for an expedited vote. Finally, it sent both antievolution bills back to the judiciary committee for reconsideration during a month-long legislative recess that began in mid-February.90 This provided time for antievolutionists to counterattack. They made the most of their opportunity.
“As near as we can judge,” one reader wrote to the Nashville Banner in early February 1925, “the house of representatives has passed the bill ... , the senate judiciary committee has recommended the bill for rejection ... , and the forum has thus far been monopolized by those who oppose the bill. It is time something was said for the other side.”91 This writer, and dozens of other antievolutionists who sent letters to the editors of Tennessee newspapers in support of the Butler bill, displayed an understanding and acceptance of Bryan’s basic argument that the majority should oversee the content of public school instruction, at least with respect to the teaching of “unproven” theories that profoundly influenced social and spiritual values.
Summer for the Gods: The Scopes Trial and America's Continuing Debate Over Science and Religion Page 7