sound, but when pronounced libeelious it sounds frightfully evil,” the attorney told him. “I know the men on the jury. I have grown up with some of them. I know how they feel about evil wicked things and I knew just what response that evil-sounding word would evoke.” In later years, Darrow told fanciful stories about the bar examination (most of them involving alcohol), which took place at a room in the Tod House, a local tavern. The general theme of his tales, that his examination was a casual ceremony given by genial members of the local legal fraternity, is credible. “They were all good fellows and wanted to help us through,” he recalled.
Darrow returned to Kinsman, which had, in the blacksmith, all the lawyers it needed. So he heeded Greeley’s famous advice. The twenty-one-year-old lawyer had gone west, the local press reported, to make a start in “the territories.” Custer had but recently died at Little Big Horn, and the cattle drives and wagon trains were still toting cowboys, sodbusters, and gunslingers to the Wild West when Darrow passed through a scenic part of central Kansas, along the Chisholm Trail. In the town of McPherson a group of two dozen Ohio families had founded a settlement called the “Ashtabula Colony.” Darrow visited, liked what he saw, and rented an office, intent on making his fortune on the rolling Kansas plains. But something changed his mind, and he moved on. Maybe the risk and the isolation were daunting. Or maybe the something was a woman.
In the spring of 1880, Darrow married Jessie Ohl. She was a little younger than he, a rural lass he had known in Kinsman and courted for years. He made her laugh and took her to dances in the town hall, and she went to see him lecture and debate. She came from a prosperous farming family that owned land in Ohio and Minnesota. Her money helped pay for Darrow’s law books, and they settled in Andover, a tiny community a dozen miles from Kinsman.
Andover was a hick burg, with a square of buildings, wood sidewalks, and hitching racks surrounded by fields. Darrow and Jessie roomed above a store, in a second-floor apartment that doubled as an office and a home. He took, as a helper, James Roberts, the son of Lorenzo the blacksmith. Roberts read law with Darrow and went on to become a judge. In time the town acquired a pool hall and a tavern, where the blind barmaid ascertained what mugs were full by sticking her thumb in the beer. Darrow found a kindred spirit in Wat Morley, the freethinking owner of a clothing store, whose feud with the barmaid and her husband—Morley had suggested that they lacked a marriage license—bloomed into a slander suit that provided the town with invaluable diversion.
A lawsuit, in those days, was like a medieval tournament, Darrow recalled. “Every one, for miles around, had heard of the case and taken sides … Neighborhoods, churches, lodges and entire communities were divided as if in war … Audiences assembled from far and near.” It was Morley who, in one of Darrow’s first showdowns, gave him some memorable advice. Get to the justice of the peace’s home early on the morning of the trial, Morley said, and introduce yourself with a jug of whiskey. Darrow did so, only to find that the opposing attorney had gotten there the evening before, and caroused with the jurist all night.20
The law gave Darrow a glimpse at the sins of his neighbors, which they labored so hard to hide. The experience confirmed what his father had taught him about “the right sort” of people. “The only way I got any money was defending farmers who sold hard cider, because we had a prohibition law in those days in northern Ohio,” said Darrow. “Then I used to defend deacons for watering the milk before they sent it to the factory.”
“Membership in a church in no way affected these cases of dilution,” he noted.
Darrow’s talents as an orator made him a popular guest at patriotic events and other celebrations, and the speech-making was good advertising for his law practice. In 1881, the farmers in Wayne celebrated the end-of-summer harvest with a September picnic. Rigs stirred the dust on the county roads and families gathered for backslaps and hugs, home-cooked suppers, music from a brass band, songs, and Darrow’s speech. He gave them what they wanted to hear, with an ode to Manifest Destiny.
“Friends and Neighbors … Your