| Both popular and academic recollections of the trial of John Thomas Scopes in July 1925 in Dayton, Tennessee, have been reduced to Clarence Darrow cross-examining William Jennings Bryan and the Fundamentalist antievolution movement into their respective graves while H. L. Mencken and a horde of reporters helped create the first media circus. The resultant social myth surrounding the Scopes trial is characterized by several significant alterations and omissions, most notably of Circuit Attorney General A. T. Stewart's almost total control of the legal issues and the crucial rhetorical role played by Dudley Field Malone, one of the defense co-counsel.;The Scopes trial itself is reconsidered in terms of its three distinct legal stages. The constitutional issues argued during the trial and the appeal of Scopes conviction, are traced to their eventual resolution in the United States Supreme Court decisions regarding Arkansas' antievolution law in Epperson v. Arkansas and the Louisiana Balanced Treatment Act in Edwards v. Aguillard. Of more significance rhetorically is the shift in defense strategy away from the intended argument for the reconciliation of evolution and religion, advanced primarily by Malone and to be evidenced by the testimony of religious and scientific experts, to the emphasis on ridicule highlighted when Darrow put Bryan on the stand as an expert on the Bible.;The resulting legacy of ridicule was manifest not only in the onslaught of press coverage with decidedly favored the defense, but also in the failure of Bryan's supporters to explain his public humiliation, the preponderance of autobiographies by those associated with the defense, the verdict of the majority of historians and biographers, and, most importantly, the film version of Inherit the Wind's fictional account of the Scopes trial. Revisionist efforts have only served to reinforce the distorted view inherent in the drama. In considering the current instantiation of the myth surrounding the Scopes trial, as well as its origins and the reasons for its persistence, it becomes clear the legacy of ridicule has replaced the idea of reconciliation between the two sides, just as it did during the trial. |
