William Jennings Bryan, "The Great Commoner", crusaded against the teaching of evolution in schools.

Asked by prosecutors to help present the case against Scopes, a 65-year-old Bryan had spent much of the previous two years on a personal crusade to remove the teaching of evolution from public schools.

Bryan, originally from Illinois and known as "The Great Commoner," was a populist and a fixture in American politics since the late 1800s. He had been a Congressman, a three-time Democratic contender for the presidency and the Secretary of State under Woodrow Wilson. His fundamentalist views were widely embraced throughout the rural South, and he was the nation's most prominent voice against Darwinism, which he termed "ape-ism."

But Bryan's role as a religious and moral crusader for the past thirty years pushed aside his law practice. He came to Dayton more to provide rhetoric than to offer legal counsel.

Clarence Darrow, the most famous American lawyer of the 20th century.

His nemesis wouldn't make an appearance for another two days. Clarence Darrow arrived in Dayton just a day before the trial was set to start. Darrow, 68 years old and perhaps the most famous American lawyer of the 20th century, was ready to do ideological battle with Bryan.

Darrow was known for defending labor leaders and radicals, as well as high-profile murderers. Perhaps his most famous clients were Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb, the two wealthy Chicago teens convicted of killing a schoolmate, who Darrow helped escape the death penalty.

Like Bryan, Darrow had been drawn to politics, but lost an 1896 campaign for Congress. And he blamed Bryan for Democratic defeats in several elections -- in which Bryan was the Democratic candidate.

Darrow, born in rural Ohio, considered himself an agnostic, but many believed he was an atheist. He was disturbed by the deep-rooted influence of religious fundamentalism throughout rural America, a fact that made the Scopes trial as much a personal crusade for him as it was for Bryan.

Darrow offered his services to Scopes for free, but also like Bryan, his role in the trial was more as orator than lawyer. Much of the legal defense would be covered by ACLU lawyer Arthur Garfield Hays.

The interior of the Rhea County Court House today.

Darrow would also spend much of his time during the trial battling back religious incursions into the courtroom, and he found himself in counterpoint with Judge John Raulston from the very start.

As the trial began, Darrow asked the judge to break with the local practice of having the sheriff choose the jury pool. Jurors' names, Darrow maintained, should be picked from a hat. Raulston agreed and let his daughter choose the first name.

Much of Darrow's case hinged on expert witnesses -- scientists, theologians, scholars -- to prove the legitimacy of Darwinian theory and to interpret the Bible. His goal: to show that teaching evolution doesn't inherently conflict with the biblical version of creation, and to demonstrate that the Bible itself has varying accounts.

Prosecutors insisted the case's reach was narrow: did Scopes break the law or not? Raulston considered the issue, but put off making a decision.

On the third day of the trial, Darrow again launched a direct attack on Raulston's sensibilities. Darrow insisted that the judge suspend his usual practice of opening each day's testimony with a customary prayer.

"I do not object to the jury or anyone else praying in secret or in private," Darrow argued, "but I do object to the turning of this courtroom into a meeting house."

Raulston overruled the objection. The prayer was heard.

A day later, both sides presented their cases. Darrow's first witness was zoologist Maynard Metcalf. Prosecutors protested Metcalf's testimony, so Raulston excused the jurors while Metcalf was initially questioned.

"The fact of evolution is a thing that is perfectly and absolutely clear," Metcalf told the court.

The defense team for Scopes was not allowed to call expert witnesses.

As court ended that day, Bryan handed Darrow a small wooden monkey, a tiny momento of the trial.

The next day, in the sweltering Tennessee heat, Bryan renewed his argument to keep experts out of the trial.

Bryan's son, William Jr., joined his father in the fight, saying that "to permit an expert to testify upon this issue would be to substitute trial by experts for trial by jury."

Raulston was ultimately swayed and ruled out testimony by defense experts. Darrow was livid and accused Raulston of bias.

"I do not understand why every request of the state and every suggestion of the prosecution should meet with an endless waste of time," Darrow complained, "and a bare suggestion of anything that is perfectly competent on our part should be immediately overruled."

Raulston was not pleased and held Darrow in contempt: "Men may become prominent, but they should never feel themselves superior to the law or justice," he told the defense lawyer.

Darrow apologized.

The next day, Darrow had another surprise for the court and the crowd watching the proceedings. He put Bryan on the stand as an expert witness. Bryan surprisingly agreed and said Darrow could ask any question he wanted about the Bible. Darrow was well-prepared, and he had a specific goal: to get Bryan to admit that parts of the Bible were open to interpretation, even by creationists.

Three thousand people were there to watch the two men square off.

"Do you claim that everything in the Bible should be literally interpreted?" Darrow asked.

"I believe everything in the Bible should be accepted as it is given there," Bryan responded.

The questioning quickly turned into a rapid-fire give and take. Darrow continually switched directions, hoping to catch Bryan contradicting himself.

Darrow: But when you read that Jonah swallowed the whale--or that the whale swallowed Jonah -- excuse me please -- how do you literally interpret that?

Bryan: When I read that a big fish swallowed Jonah--it does not say whale....That is my recollection of it. A big fish, and I believe it, and I believe in a God who can make a whale and can make a man and make both do what He pleases.

Darrow: Now, you say, the big fish swallowed Jonah, and he there remained how long--three days-- and then he spewed him upon the land. You believe that the big fish was made to swallow Jonah?

Bryan: I am not prepared to say that; the Bible merely says it was done.

Darrow: You don't know whether it was the ordinary run of fish, or made for that purpose?

Bryan: You may guess; you evolutionists guess.....

Darrow: You are not prepared to say whether that fish was made especially to swallow a man or not?

Bryan: The Bible doesn't say, so I am not prepared to say.

Darrow was relentless: he grilled Bryan about the age of the Earth, whether Joshua actually made the sun stand still, whether Eve was created from Adam's rib, where Cain's wife came from. Bryan maintained his composure, but was often trapped by his own logic.

Darrow: Then, when the Bible said, for instance, "and God called the firmament heaven. And the evening and the morning were the second day," that does not necessarily mean twenty-four hours?

Bryan: I do not think it necessarily does.

Darrow: Do you think it does or does not?

Bryan: I know a great many think so.

Darrow: What do you think?

Bryan: I do not think it does.

Darrow: You think those were not literal days?

Bryan: I do not think they were twenty-four-hour days.

Darrow: What do you think about it?

Bryan: That is my opinion--I do not know that my opinion is better on that subject than those who think it does.

Darrow: You do not think that?

Bryan: No. But I think it would be just as easy for the kind of God we believe in to make the earth in six days as in six years or in 6,000,000 years or in 600,000,000 years. I do not think it important whether we believe one or the other.

Darrow: Do you think those were literal days?

Bryan: My impression is they were periods, but I would not attempt to argue as against anybody who wanted to believe in literal days.

Darrow's questioning continued for two hours until Judge Raulston had had enough, and abruptly adjourned the court. The judge struck Darrow's examination of Bryan from the record, saying it was not relevant.

Both sides retreated for the day. But Darrow had one more surprise ready for Bryan.

The next morning, the renowned defense lawyer got up and asked the jury for a guilty verdict:

As far as this case stands before the jury, the court has told you very plainly that if you think my client taught that man descended from a lower order of animals, you will find him guilty, and you heard the testimony of the boys on that questions and heard read the books, and there is no dispute about the facts. Scopes did not go on the stand, because he could not deny the statements made by the boys [from Scopes' class who testified]. I do not know how you may feel, I am not especially interested in it, but this case and this law will never be decided until it gets to a higher court, and it cannot get to a higher court probably, very well, unless you bring in a verdict.

By asking the jury to find Scopes guilty, Darrow forfeited his closing argument, the one moment that every spectator, every reporter, everyone following the trial had awaited. He also deprived Bryan of a closing argument, since state law said that if one side didn't make a closing, the other couldn't either. The jury didn't take long to complete its work, returning less than nine minutes later with a guilty verdict.

The judge gave Scopes a $100 fine, and the trial was over.

Bryan claimed victory, and planned to continue his fundamentalist crusade across the country. But his aging body caught up with him. For years, he had been suffering from diabetes and a heart condition. Five days after the trial ended, Bryan returned from Sunday church services and died while taking an afternoon nap.

His funeral at Arlington Cemetery was a national event. His tombstone was engraved, "He Kept The Faith."

Darrow appealed the case to the Tennessee Supreme Court, which overturned the case on a technicality. (At the time in Tennessee, juries were responsible for setting fines, not judges.) Darrow won, rhetorically at least, but the anti-evolution law stayed on the Tennessee books for another 40 years.

Darrow himself practiced law for another 13 years. He died in Chicago in 1938, at age 80. While his legacy in the case was preserved, history treated Bryan less well. The 1960 film "Inherit the Wind" demonized Bryan and parodied the rural Southern culture that produced the Scopes trial. Bryan's crusade to prevent educators and students from embracing Darwinism ultimately proved futile and was relegated to history books.
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