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At the time John Scopes was "arrested," William Jennings Bryan, the Great Commoner, was speaking at the World's Christian Fundamentals Association (WCFA). After a distinguished and high-profile career of public service as a populist politician and secretary of state, Bryan had emerged in the post–World War I era as the leading figure in a growing antievolution movement; Tennessee's antievolution law had been inspired by Bryan's crusade. WCFA leaders recognized the artificial nature of the Scopes case and, concluding that the local prosecutors could not be trusted to defend adequately the antievolution statute, asked Bryan to get involved. He promptly accepted on a pro bono basis. Bryan also asked that a team of prominent out-of-state attorneys join the prosecution team, but the local prosecutors demurred, noting that Tennessee attorneys would carry more weight in a Tennessee court. They selected attorney general Tom Stewart to head the prosecution.
Bryan's appearance at Dayton changed everything. Because of the publicity that Bryan would generate, the ACLU would not get a narrow constitutional test of the antievolution statute. Moreover, given Bryan's political and personal philosophy, "evolution would be on trial at Dayton," and the ACLU's defense of individual liberty "would run headlong into calls for majority rule," Bryan's populist stance.
The ACLU lost control of the case when Clarence Darrow stepped forward to lead the defense and confront Bryan, with whom he had been sparring in print for years. Joining Darrow was the sophisticated New York divorce lawyer Dudley Field Malone, who apparently held a grudge against Bryan from the days in which he served under him at the State Department. Darrow and Malone issued press releases offering their pro bono assistance to Scopes's defense, forcing the ACLU's hand. The Darrow-Malone team would transform the case into a public forum that would pit "innocent, truth-seeking scientists" against "an oppressive, fundamentalist huckster." Darrow would, in effect, turn Scopes into the Invisible Man and put Bryan on trial. Larson captures this nicely: "The Great Commoner—the self-proclaimed voice of majority rule and religiously motivated progressive reform—would personify the threat to individual liberty in America."
For his part, while he fired some pretrial salvos back at Darrow, Bryan did try to focus the forthcoming trial away from evolution per se and toward popular control over public education. Bryan would attempt to make the Scopes trial a matter over whether scientists or "the Christian people of Tennessee" should control Tennessee public education.
Larson's account of the trial itself is a gripping narrative, despite the fact that readers already know the outcome. On the merits of the law, of course, there was no contest at all: Scopes was guilty, and the verdict was never in doubt.
Most of the interest in the trial has centered on Darrow's cross examination of Bryan on the lawn outside the Dayton courthouse. In this famous exchange, Larson casts Darrow in the role of the "village skeptic," asking routine questions about biblical interpretation that were not related to the case. What ensued was a debate with Bryan over biblical literalism, a no-win situation for the aging Great Commoner, who was easily overwhelmed by a forensic bulldog at the peak of his powers.
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