who would preside at the trial, had been “somewhat indiscreet,” as Hicks put it, when plotting the case with them. But the churchmen whom Bryan solicited were not so confident. They worried about how the Yankee press would describe their faith in virgin births and talking snakes. One by one, Bryan’s experts declined his invitation. And so, as the trial approached, the prosecutors returned to their initial strategy. They spoke no more about moral victories, and went to work on the judge, intent on keeping experts off the stand.
Raulston was a deeply religious man, born in a mountain vale called Fiery Gizzard, down near the Alabama border. He was a lay preacher in the Methodist Church and had taken a few turns speaking at revivals. And he was an ambitious man who knew his constituents and shared their pride and insecurities. “Scientific testimony for either side would be impertinent and incompetent,” Hicks told him. “We have no desire to … allow the defense to turn loose a slush of scientific imagination and guesswork on our people, upon whom … these great lawyers from the north and northwest look with pity and compassion, denominating them a set of ignoramuses.”
“If we can shut out the expert testimony, we will be through in a short time,” Bryan wrote a friend on the eve of the trial. “I have no doubt of our final victory.”18
DARROW HAD VISITED Dayton at the end of June to take his turn before the Dayton Progressive Club. “He was somewhat disarmed to find the people, not dogmatic and intolerant, but open minded and of sound judgment,” Haggard told Bryan. Indeed it was so. Aside from the heat, Darrow thought Dayton a lovely little market town and he went to work wooing its residents. “He drawled comfortably and hadn’t any airs,” Scopes remembered. “He gave the impression he might have grown up in Dayton, just an unpolished, casual country lawyer.”
Dayton charmed reporters as well. “The streets are asphalt, the electric lights work indoors and out … the girls are peaches and wear flapper clothes, the young fellows are stylish and collegiate,” wrote Jack Lait for the Hearst news service. “An airplane … roars over the town and no horses shy and no yokels stare.”
Colby and Malone were in Dayton as well, and it was this trip that “convinced Colby he would be happier elsewhere,” said Scopes. The defendant and his lawyers had visited a courthouse in the mountains so Darrow and Colby could get a feel for local justice. “It was a rape case, and the defendant appeared to be a half-witted young fellow who wasn’t sure what was going on,” Scopes recalled. “His accuser was a young woman who seemed to know too well what was going on … She said she was pregnant and … as a means of escaping an embarrassing situation … had conveniently accused the poor devil of raping her.”
A court-appointed counsel was botching the defense before an audience of gun-toting hillbillies. Colby was “overcome at the poverty, the ignorance and the uncleanliness of the inhabitants.” But Darrow, outraged, muttered, “I am going to defend that boy” and headed toward the bench. Neal and Scopes blocked him, told him that an outsider would only alienate the jury, and muscled him into the car.19
Some wondered if Darrow was up to the task. Edgar Lee Masters wrote to Mencken, previewing the showdown. “I fear that you will find that Darrow is not the man to fight Bryan,” Masters wrote. “I have seen Darrow perform over and over again. He must have the stage set, a complaisant judge or a fixed jury to be bold and even there his forte is a speech, such as it is. He fails in cross examination due to his lack of concentration, patience, sequences of plan, pugnacity and will. I have seen Darrow quit cold more than once where he could see that it meant labor to fight, and where the publicity was doubtful, or adverse. In a word he lacks character.”
Mencken didn’t disagree, but Darrow’s flaws were irrelevant, the newsman replied. Everyone understood the strategy. “The way to handle it is to convert it into a headlong assault upon Bryan. He is the central figure, not that poor worm of a school master,” Mencken wrote.20
DARROW RETURNED TO Dayton on Thursday, July 9, the eve of the trial. He had turned sixty-eight that April, and age had surely weathered him; his famously unruly forelock was cut short and rather than falling across