Summer for the Gods: The Scopes Trial and America's Continuing Debate Over Science and Religion (11 page)
Authors: Edward J. Larson
BOOK: Summer for the Gods: The Scopes Trial and America's Continuing Debate Over Science and Religion
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Outnumbered Senate opponents of the legislation countered with pleas for individual rights. “It isn’t a question of whether you believe in the Book of Genesis, but whether you think the church and state should be kept separate,” one senator asserted. “No law can shackle human thought,” another declared. A Republican lawmaker quoted passages on religious freedom from the state constitution, and blamed the entire controversy on “that greatest of all disturbers of the political and public life from the last twenty-eight or thirty years, I mean William Jennings Bryan.” But a proponent countered, “This bill does not attempt to interfere with religious freedom or dictate the beliefs of any man, for it simply endeavors to carry out the wishes of the great majority of the people.” Such sentiments easily carried the Senate.
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State and national opponents of antievolution laws appealed to Governor Peay to veto the legislation. Owing to the governor’s national reputation as a progressive who championed increased support for public education and a longer school year—efforts that later led to the naming of a college in his honor—those writing from out of state probably entertained some hope for success. Urged on by the California science writer Maynard Shipley and his Science League of America, a new organization formed to oppose antievolutionism, letters of protest poured in from across America. For example, taking the line of Draper and White, a New Yorker asked, “The Middle Ages gave us heretics, witches burnt at the stake, filth and ignorance. Do we want to return to the same?” From within Tennessee, some concerned citizens appealed for a veto. The dean of the state’s premiere African-American college, Fisk University, wrote, “As a clergyman and educator, I hope that you will refuse to give your support to the Evolution Bill. It would seem most unfortunate to me should the State of Tennessee legislate against the beliefs of liberal Christianity.” The Episcopal bishop of Tennessee added, “I consider such restrictive legislation not only unfortunate but calamitous.”
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Yet most letters to the governor from Tennesseans supported the measure, and two potentially significant opponents kept silent. The University of Tennessee’s powerful president Harcourt A. Morgan, who privately opposed the antievolution bill, held his tongue so long as Peay’s proposal for expanding the university still awaited action in the state legislature—and admonished his faculty to do likewise. In a confidential note, he assured the governor, “The subject of Evolution so intricately involves religious belief, which the University has no disposition to dictate, that the University declines to engage in the controversy.” Only after the legislature adjourned and the new law became the primary subject of ridicule at the annual student parade did the depth of university opposition to it become apparent.
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Similarly, the Tennessee Academy of Sciences, which counted Morgan and other university scientists among its leading members, said nothing against the measure until after it became law. This left Peay free to follow his personal and political inclinations. “I remember a short conversation I had with you on the capitol steps some weeks ago about the Evolution bill. You said then, ‘That you thought you would sign it,’ ” a Nashville minister wrote to the governor. “May I, as your friend and supporter, ask you to sign the present bill and help us in Tennessee who are making a desperate fight against the inroads of Materialism.”
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Peay kept his word.
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Similarly, the Tennessee Academy of Sciences, which counted Morgan and other university scientists among its leading members, said nothing against the measure until after it became law. This left Peay free to follow his personal and political inclinations. “I remember a short conversation I had with you on the capitol steps some weeks ago about the Evolution bill. You said then, ‘That you thought you would sign it,’ ” a Nashville minister wrote to the governor. “May I, as your friend and supporter, ask you to sign the present bill and help us in Tennessee who are making a desperate fight against the inroads of Materialism.”
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Peay kept his word.
The governor explained his decision to sign the bill in a curious message to the legislature. On one hand, Peay firmly asserted for proponents, “It is the belief of our people and they say in this bill that any theory of man’s descent from lower animals, ... because a denial of the Bible, shall not be taught in our public schools.” On the other hand, he assured opponents that this law “will not put our teachers in any jeopardy.” Indeed, even though the most cursory review of Tennessee high school biology textbooks should have shown him otherwise, Peay wrote, “I can find nothing of consequence in the books now being taught in our schools with which this bill will interfere in the slightest manner.” Nevertheless, he went on to hail the measure as “a distinct protest against an irreligious tendency to exalt
so-called
science, and deny the Bible in some schools and quarters—a tendency fundamentally wrong and fatally mischievous in its effects on our children, our institutions and our country.”
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so-called
science, and deny the Bible in some schools and quarters—a tendency fundamentally wrong and fatally mischievous in its effects on our children, our institutions and our country.”
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Peay, whose progressivism grew out of his traditional religious beliefs, simply could not accept a conflict between public education and popular religion. In 1925, only days after he signed the antievolution law, Peay won legislative approval for a massive education reform bill that laid the foundation for Tennessee’s modern, state-supported system of public schools. He approved of limits on teaching evolution as part of those state-funded schools. “I have profound contempt for those who are throwing slurs at Tennessee for having the [antievolution] law,” Peay said during the Scopes controversy. “In my judgement any state had better dispense with its schools than with its Bible. We are keeping both.” Yet he could not totally ignore the tension between a fundamentalist’s fear of modern education and a progressive’s faith in it. In his message to the legislature on the antievolution bill, he fell back on Bryan’s populist refrain: “The people have a right and must have the right to regulate what is taught in their schools.”
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Trapped between fundamentalism and progressivism, Peay may have viewed majoritarianism as an excuse for the law. Caught in the same bind, Bryan saw it as the law’s ultimate justification.
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Trapped between fundamentalism and progressivism, Peay may have viewed majoritarianism as an excuse for the law. Caught in the same bind, Bryan saw it as the law’s ultimate justification.
Bryan rejoiced in the decision by Peay to sign the legislation, but both individuals misjudged the consequences of that action. “The Christian parents of the State owe you a debt of gratitude for saving their children from the poisonous influence of an unproven hypothesis,” Bryan wired the governor. “Other states North and South will follow the example of Tennessee.”
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He missed the mark with this prediction because he failed to anticipate a test case involving the act. Indeed, blinded by their sunny progressive faith in the curative power of majoritarian reforms, neither of these experienced politicians saw the Scopes trial coming. According to Peay, the law simply covered anti-biblical doctrines, and he trusted that “nothing of that sort is taught in any accepted book on science.” Bryan, for his part, trusted that public school teachers would “respect the law.” Both could agree with Peay’s comment, “Nobody believes that it is going to be an active statute.”
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It took Riley and the WCFA to appreciate the potential significance of an incipient conspiracy by free-speech advocates, evolution scientists, and publicity-minded townspeople for testing the law in court—and then to call on Bryan to defend his majoritarian reform against charges that it violated elemental concepts of individual liberty.
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He missed the mark with this prediction because he failed to anticipate a test case involving the act. Indeed, blinded by their sunny progressive faith in the curative power of majoritarian reforms, neither of these experienced politicians saw the Scopes trial coming. According to Peay, the law simply covered anti-biblical doctrines, and he trusted that “nothing of that sort is taught in any accepted book on science.” Bryan, for his part, trusted that public school teachers would “respect the law.” Both could agree with Peay’s comment, “Nobody believes that it is going to be an active statute.”
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It took Riley and the WCFA to appreciate the potential significance of an incipient conspiracy by free-speech advocates, evolution scientists, and publicity-minded townspeople for testing the law in court—and then to call on Bryan to defend his majoritarian reform against charges that it violated elemental concepts of individual liberty.
—CHAPTER THREE—
IN DEFENSE OF INDIVIDUAL LIBERTY
A
CTIVISTS WITH THE American Civil Liberties Union did not dismiss the enactment of the Tennessee law against teaching evolution as an insignificant occurrence in some remote intellectual backwater. More critically, they did not view the antievolution crusade in isolation; if they had, they probably would have ignored it along with countless other laws and movements to advance Protestant culture then prevalent throughout the United States. Prior to the Scopes trial, the ACLU did not display any particular interest in challenging government efforts to protect or promote religious beliefs. To the contrary, Quakers played a major role in founding and financing the organization during the First World War as a vehicle to protect religiously motivated pacifists from compulsory military service. Yet ACLU leaders saw the new Tennessee statute in a different light, one that made it stand out as a threat to freedom and individual liberty in the broader American society.
CTIVISTS WITH THE American Civil Liberties Union did not dismiss the enactment of the Tennessee law against teaching evolution as an insignificant occurrence in some remote intellectual backwater. More critically, they did not view the antievolution crusade in isolation; if they had, they probably would have ignored it along with countless other laws and movements to advance Protestant culture then prevalent throughout the United States. Prior to the Scopes trial, the ACLU did not display any particular interest in challenging government efforts to protect or promote religious beliefs. To the contrary, Quakers played a major role in founding and financing the organization during the First World War as a vehicle to protect religiously motivated pacifists from compulsory military service. Yet ACLU leaders saw the new Tennessee statute in a different light, one that made it stand out as a threat to freedom and individual liberty in the broader American society.
A fashionable new book of the era,
The Mind in the Making
by James Harvey Robinson of the left-wing New School for Social Research in New York City, captured the reactionary mood of the times as perceived by many of the socially prominent, politically radical New Yorkers who led the ACLU during the early twenties. According to this book, which incorporated an evolutionary view of intellectual and social history, a systematic assault on personal liberty in the United States began during the First World War; various state and local authorities had limited freedom prior to this period, to be sure, but these earlier restrictions represented isolated incidents and could be dealt with accordingly. The war changed everything.
1
The Mind in the Making
by James Harvey Robinson of the left-wing New School for Social Research in New York City, captured the reactionary mood of the times as perceived by many of the socially prominent, politically radical New Yorkers who led the ACLU during the early twenties. According to this book, which incorporated an evolutionary view of intellectual and social history, a systematic assault on personal liberty in the United States began during the First World War; various state and local authorities had limited freedom prior to this period, to be sure, but these earlier restrictions represented isolated incidents and could be dealt with accordingly. The war changed everything.
1
“It is a terrible thing to lead this great and peaceful people into war,” President Wilson declared in his 1917 war message to Congress. He then added to the terror of some by warning that “a firm hand of stern repression” would curtail domestic disloyalty during wartime.
2
At Wilson’s request, Congress imposed a military draft, enacted an Espionage Act that outlawed both obstructing the recruitment of troops and causing military insubordination, and authorized the immigration service to denaturalize and deport foreign-born radicals. The federal Justice Department broadly construed the Espionage Act to cover statements critical of the war effort, while the postal service revoked mailing privileges for publications it considered to “embarrass or hamper the government in conducting the war.”
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In 1918, Congress responded to mounting domestic opposition to the war by expanding the Espionage Act to bar “disloyal” or “abusive” statements about the American form of government. Several states outlawed teaching German in public schools. Public and private institutions of higher education throughout the United States, including Columbia University, in the ACLU’s backyard, dismissed tenured faculty members for opposing American intervention in the war.
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At Wilson’s request, Congress imposed a military draft, enacted an Espionage Act that outlawed both obstructing the recruitment of troops and causing military insubordination, and authorized the immigration service to denaturalize and deport foreign-born radicals. The federal Justice Department broadly construed the Espionage Act to cover statements critical of the war effort, while the postal service revoked mailing privileges for publications it considered to “embarrass or hamper the government in conducting the war.”
3
In 1918, Congress responded to mounting domestic opposition to the war by expanding the Espionage Act to bar “disloyal” or “abusive” statements about the American form of government. Several states outlawed teaching German in public schools. Public and private institutions of higher education throughout the United States, including Columbia University, in the ACLU’s backyard, dismissed tenured faculty members for opposing American intervention in the war.
The National Civil Liberties Bureau was established in 1917 to defend conscientious objectors and antiwar protesters. It initially grew out of the American Union Against Militarism (AUAM), an organization formed by wealthy pacifists to oppose American entry into World War I, but it soon acquired a separate existence under the leadership of Roger Baldwin, a Harvard-educated social worker with an aristocratic pedigree and radical leanings. “We are interested in preserving civil liberties in America,” Baldwin explained at the time, “first, for the sake of democracy itself, and second, for the rights of the people to discuss peace terms and war policies. The rights of both individuals and minorities are being grossly violated throughout the country.”
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Such violations struck close to home for the fledgling organization and helped shape its libertarian philosophy toward free speech. Within weeks of the bureau’s formation, the postal service banned from the mail twelve different antiwar pamphlets the bureau had prepared for mass distribution. Anticipating this problem, Baldwin sought prepublication approval for mailing the pamphlets and secured the aid of Clarence Darrow to negotiate a settlement with the Postmaster General, but to no avail. One of the banned pamphlets, authored by bureau officer and future American Socialist leader Norman M. Thomas, articulated the view of democracy and liberty then taking hold among bureau activists. President Wilson, who hailed from the same liberal establishment that gave birth to the bureau, maintained a majoritarian view of democracy that justified restrictions on free speech and other minority rights once Congress declared war. In the bureau pamphlet, Thomas countered that the majority should never assert control over matters of individual conscience. “Democracy degenerates into mobocracy unless the rights of minorities are respected,” Thomas wrote.
5
Triggered both by this encounter with the postal service and by the bureau’s subsequent defense of the radical Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), federal agents began spying on bureau activities. In 1918, Justice Department officials raided the bureau’s headquarters and threatened to indict organization leaders. Later that year, Baldwin began a year in prison for refusing to comply with the Selective Service Act.
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Triggered both by this encounter with the postal service and by the bureau’s subsequent defense of the radical Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), federal agents began spying on bureau activities. In 1918, Justice Department officials raided the bureau’s headquarters and threatened to indict organization leaders. Later that year, Baldwin began a year in prison for refusing to comply with the Selective Service Act.
Bureau leaders initially tried to cooperate with officials in the Wilson administration, many of whom also came from elite backgrounds. Indeed, prior to 1918, Baldwin naively supplied sensitive bureau information to his friends in high government positions, confident that this would ease official suspicions about the organization and its supporters; instead, it led to mass arrests. At the time of his own imprisonment, Baldwin could only comfort his mother by writing that “my guardian [is] a fine young Yale man.”
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These bitter experiences gradually changed the outlook toward democratic government held by Baldwin and other members of the bureau’s executive committee. “Largely oblivious to civil liberties considerations before the war, the wartime crisis forced them to abandon their faith in the inevitability of social progress and their majoritarian view of democracy,” the ACLU historian Samuel Walker concluded. “They now began to see that majority rule and liberty were not necessarily synonymous and thus discovered the First Amendment as a new principle for advancing human freedom.”
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This new antimajoritarian impulse, forged in the crucible of wartime mass hysteria, profoundly influenced the ACLU’s response to the antievolution crusade.
7
This new antimajoritarian impulse, forged in the crucible of wartime mass hysteria, profoundly influenced the ACLU’s response to the antievolution crusade.
Proponents of civil liberties expected conditions to improve after the armistice in 1918, but to them the repression appeared only to intensify. “The war brought with it a burst of unwanted and varied animation.... It was common talk that when the foe, whose criminal lust for power had precipitated the mighty tragedy, should be vanquished, things would ‘no longer be the same,’ ” Robinson wrote. “Never did bitter disappointment follow such high hopes. All the old habits of nationalistic policy reasserted themselves at Versailles.... Then there emerged from the autocracy of the Tsars the dictatorship of the proletariat, and in Hungary and Germany various startling attempts to revolutionize hastily and excessively.” From these developments the so-called Red Scare ensued. “War had naturally produced its machinery for dealing with dissenters, ... and it was the easiest thing in the world to extend the repression to those who held exceptional or unpopular views, like the Socialists and members of the I.W.W.,” Robinson reasoned. “But suspicion went further so as to embrace members of a rather small, thoughtful class who, while rarely socialistic, were confessedly skeptical in regard to the general beneficence of existing institutions, and who failed to applaud at just the right points to suit the tastes of the majority of their fellow-citizens.”
8
Robinson identified with this latter class, as did many bureau activists and their friends. As a progressive reformer prior to the war, for example, Baldwin campaigned for many majoritarian reforms, such as the initiative and referendum process, but increasingly he shifted his zeal to the defense of individual rights as he suffered under the excesses of majority rule.
8
Robinson identified with this latter class, as did many bureau activists and their friends. As a progressive reformer prior to the war, for example, Baldwin campaigned for many majoritarian reforms, such as the initiative and referendum process, but increasingly he shifted his zeal to the defense of individual rights as he suffered under the excesses of majority rule.
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