The last decade of his life saw Bryan continuing his crusades. While he was an advocate of woman's suffrage, and a staunch prohibitionist, he is most remembered for his crusade against the teaching of evolution in the public schools. As we have mentioned, this final turn in Bryan's life seems on the surface to be a radical change in his life, but in reality he was simply defending his own life long beliefs. In his confrontation with Clarence Darrow in the sleepy southern town of Dayton, Tennessee, the Great Commoner was humbled before the forces of modernism. He began his crusade by becoming involved with the Fundamentalist movement.

Fundamentalism in the 20s was a reaction to the changes in the world. "Fundamentalism, for all of its aggressiveness, was basically a movement on the run; a movement that was attempting to defend not only its theology but a complete social and cultural framework which rested squarely upon the foundation of that theology."38 These people were the same people who passed the Eighteenth Amendment, who attempted to purge all textbooks from any possible dissent from what they believed to be traditional American values, and who believed that legislatures could bring into being morals, right thinking, and patriotism. From 1921-1929, fully thirty-seven anti-evolution bills were introduced in twenty state legislatures. "Darwinism" was anathema to the Fundamentalists.39 In 1925, the Tennessee state legislature passed a law forbidding any teaching of evolution in the public schools.40

William Jennings Bryan became an advocate of fundamentalism, especially anti-evolutionism. His joining the ranks of the fundamentalists gave the movement a national spokesman who had immense prestige and an extremely loyal following.41 However, his beliefs did not completely square with strict Fundamentalist thought. He once stated that, although he did not believe in evolution, he did not object to others believing in it. Also, as a firm believer in the Social Gospel, Bryan did not share the pessimistic Fundamentalist obsession with the next life. He believed that Christianity should be used to make a better world on earth as well as in the next. The spectacle of Christians slaughtering other Christians in World War I had a profound effect upon Bryan. He believed that it was the teaching of evolution, with its Social Darwinistic connotations, that had been one of the prime causes of the war.42

Bryan, a devout Christian all his life, by the 1920s had come to believe that the theory of evolution was evil. He rejected the idea of evolution or a "missing link," believing that God created man, and any other ideas demeaned humanity.43 Some believed that Bryan's decision to throw in his lot with the anti-evolutionists was inspired by ambition, demagoguery, opportunism, and maybe even senility. However, Bryan had been raised with the fundamentalist belief that the Bible was infallible. He had objected to evolution as early as 1904, but it wasn't until the 20s that he came to crusade against it. "What had changed was not Bryan's conception of evolution but his toleration of it. By 1921 he had become convinced that the evolutionary thesis was no longer a potential danger but an immediate threat."44

The background of the trial is well known. The defendant was the small town biology teacher, John T. Scopes. He had been recruited by the ACLU to be a test case on the new Tennessee law. The courtroom was as crowded as it could be. As his defense team, Scopes had the famous Clarence Darrow, Dudly Malone, and Arthur G. Hays. Bryan was chief counsel for the prosecution, along with his son, William Jennings Bryan, Jr., and Attorney General A. T. Stewart. The trial began on July 10, 1925, twenty-nine years and a day since the "Cross of Gold" speech.45

While there were several speeches during the trial, three stand out. The first speech was by Darrow, on the fourth day of the trial. In an address as much to the crowd as to the court, Darrow said "If today you can take a thing like Evolution and make it a crime to teach it in the public schools, to-morrow you can make it a crime to teach it in the private schools... and soon you may set Catholic against Protestant, and Protestant against Protestant, and try to foist your own religion upon the minds of men."46 The fundamentalist crowd had to wait until July 16 to hear the Commoner slay Darrow and all of his evolutionist allies. In arguments over whether the defense could admit evidence from scientists, Bryan stood up and delivered his one and only speech of the trial.

In an address that was at once serious and humorous, the Commoner attempted to humiliate and discredit the theory of evolution and its advocates. He held up the book that Scopes had taught from, mocking its diagram of the evolution of life on earth. He then moved to Darwin, getting laughter from his comment that Darwin did not even have the kindness to say that mankind had come from "American monkeys," but "Old World" monkeys. This speech was interrupted more than once by Darrow, but Bryan concluded by stating that the evolutionists wished to remove the revealed word of God from the people. His speech received only limited applause, this was not the speech that defeated all arguments, it was not the sequel to the "Cross of Gold."47

It was Malone who delivered the most eloquent speech of the trial, and it came right after Bryan's. Malone stated that Bryan was not the only person who spoke for the Bible, and that "the truth does not need Mr. Bryan." He said that he and his side stood for fundamental freedom in America. At the conclusion of this speech, the whole courtroom broke out in thunderous applause; Bryan had been outdone.48 It was not, however, the last time Bryan would be humiliated during the Scopes trial.

On Monday, July 20, the judge moved the trial outside since he believed that the courtroom was going to collapse. The defense, in a strategy that the defense had worked on the whole weekend, called Bryan to the stand as an expert witness on the Bible. Bryan, with incredible overconfidence, strode to the witness stand, ready to humble the evolutionists. It was to be the Commoner, however, who emerged at the end of the day as the loser.49 As he walked to the stand, carrying his ubiquitous hand fan, he saw the wily old Clarence Darrow. Darrow was wearing a blue shirt and suspenders, trying to out common the Commoner. Although they had once been friends, Darrow was the antithesis of Bryan. He was "an iconoclast, an agnostic, and in many respects a cynic, whose active searching mind, unlike Bryan's, conceived of truth not as merely a possession to be defended but as a prize to be discovered." For the next two hours, the two old warriors engaged in a vicious, verbal battle.50

Darrow examined Bryan on the strict specifics of the Bible. He asked such questions as where Cain's wife came from, how the serpent walked before God made it crawl on its belly, and the precise nature of the creation. In a departure from strict Fundamentalist thought, Bryan admitted that the six days of Genesis were not necessarily twenty-four hour days, but could have been days as long as millions of years. The examination ended with Bryan shouting that Darrow was simply trying to slur the Bible, and Darrow thundering back "I object to your statement. I am examining you on your fool ideas that no intelligent Christian believes." By this time, both men were glaring at each other and shaking their fists, so the judge called an immediate halt to the day's proceedings. A few days later, to the surprise of no one, Scopes was found guilty. Darrow, however, prevented Bryan from delivering his closing statement that he had worked on for weeks by resting his case without a statement of his own. Five days after the trial, the Great Commoner died, apparently from diabetes.51

In the Scopes Trial, Bryan led his final crusade in an effort to prevent a modern theory from replacing the beliefs he had always cherished. He had not, as it appears on the surface, radically changed. The world was moving beyond Bryan, and, in Dayton, he made one last, desperate attempt to preserve his old world and its way of life.

The William Jennings Bryan of 1925 was a man who had hardly changed from the William Jennings Bryan of 1896. Both Bryans believed in the common man, in peace, and in Christianity. Throughout his life, Bryan crusaded for his beliefs, which were consistent throughout his whole life. Bryan did not have a very open mind, not many new thoughts entered into it. He was absolutely sure that he was right about everything he believed in. "His picture of the American, first formed in the nineteenth century, remained intact and no amount of change could alter it."52

In his early years, Bryan was the radical champion of the white underclass. His "Cross of Gold" speech, while it stayed away from anything specific, captured an image of the rural ideal which many voters clung to. He believed that the government could intervene and protect the small person from the greedy corporate interests of the East. He wanted to change the lot of the common man, and make it more like what he believed was the ideal American life.

As Secretary of State, Bryan believed that he and his government could remake the world into peace filled Eden, with war eliminated. His faith that his peace treaties could prevent future wars was unfortunately and tragically proven wrong by World War I. However, Bryan kept his faith in peace, and resigned from Wilsonıs cabinet rather than betray his belief.

The Scopes Trial saw Bryan once again advocating governmental action to make society into the "right" society. His humiliation on the witness stand dealt a severe blow to the cause of Fundamentalism, while actually winning some converts to the theory of evolution.53 On his own terms, however, Bryan had kept his faith and had not shirked before his latest and final enemy, evolution.

Throughout all of his crusades, Bryan remained remarkably consistent. The world itself, however, changed around him. The world of 1925 was very different from that of 1896. By 1925, Bryan was crusading for a world that no longer existed, if it had ever existed at all. The paradox of his later years "was in a sense the paradox of American history itself: a faith in the inevitability of progress coupled with a desire to see America unchanged."54 The Great Commoner wished that America could have remained the way it was when he was growing up. In the end, William Jennings Bryan was the symbol of the United States that once was, but existed no more.

38 Levine, 260.

39 Ibid., 276-277.

40 Ibid., 326-327.

41 Ibid., 272, 274-275.

42 Ibid., 261-262.

43 Ibid., 264-266.

44 Ibid., 266.

45 Koenig, 626, 639-641.

46 Long, 385.

47 Koenig, 643-645.

48 Ibid., 645-646.

49 Ibid., 648-649, 652.

50 Levine, 348.

51 Ginger, 233-246: Koenig, 651, 654, 657-658.

52 Levine, 360.

53 Ibid., 352-353.

54 Ibid., 362.

Cherny, Robert W. A Righteous Cause: The Life of William Jennings Bryan. Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1985.

Ginger, Ray, ed. William Jennings Bryan: Selections. Indianapolis: The Bobbs, Merrill Company, Inc., 1967.

Glad, Paul W. The Trumpet Soundeth: William Jennings Bryan and His Democracy. University of Nebraska Press, 1960.

-ed. William Jennings Bryan: A Profile. New York: Hill and Wang, 1968.

Kazin, Michael. The Populist Persuasion: An American History. New York: BasicBooks, a division of HarperCollins Publishers, Inc., 1995.

Koenig, Louis W. Bryan: A Political Biography of William Jennings Bryan. New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1971.

Levine, Lawrence W. Defender of the Faith: William Jennings Bryan: The Last Decade, 1915-1925. New York: Oxford University Press, 1965.

Long, J. C. Bryan: The Great Commoner. New York: D. Appleton and Company, 1928.

McMath, Jr., Robert C. American Populism, A Social History, 1877-1898. New York: Hill and Wang, 1993.