Looking out to the west from a ridge in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park all I could see was wooded mountain followed by wooded mountain, like green waves on an endless ocean, writes Wesley Boyd.
Here in the vastness of the Appalachians it was easy to understand the creed of the early pioneers from Ulster as they ventured onwards into unknown territory in search of a new life: The Cowards Never Started. The Weak Died Along the Way. Only the Strong Survived.
Upwards of 400,000 emigrants, mainly Presbyterians escaping from persecution by the Established Church, sailed to America in the early 18th century. They did not tarry long with the settlers in the eastern states but travelled south and west down the spine of the Appalachians along what became known as the Wilderness Trail into Virginia, the Carolinas, Kentucky, Tennessee and beyond.
In their new homelands they were called the Scots-Irish (or, pejoratively, the Hillbillies after their mountain abodes and their nostalgic allegiance to William of Orange). With them they carried their Bibles and their stern Calvinist faith, both handed down from generation to generation.
Farther down the mountains I drove through the small, bland town of Dayton on a creek of the Tennessee River. It was here, in this unremarkable place 80 years ago that two great opposing tenets clashed: the scientific theories of Charles Darwin as set out in his book On the Origin of Species and the Biblical fundamentalism implanted in the area by generations of Scots-Irish settlers.
Since their publication in 1859 Darwin's evolutionary theories had been denounced zealously by preachers across the Bible Belt. A number of Southern states tried to prevent them being aired in schools. In 1925 the Tennessee legislature took the lead by enacting a bill making it unlawful "to teach any theory that denies the story of Divine Creation as taught by the Bible, and to teach instead that man has descended from a lower order of animals". The American Civil Liberties Union immediately announced that it would back anyone willing to challenge the new statute.
A group of town fathers in Dayton, which was experiencing economic decline and falling population, decided to take up the challenge in the hope that publicity generated by a controversial trial would boost the town's economy. They persuaded John Scopes, a 24-year-old local teacher, to admit publicly that he had taught evolutionary theory in his biology classes. Scopes was arrested and the stage was set in Dayton for what has gone down in American history as The Great Monkey Trial.
Among those on the prosecution team for the State of Tennessee was William James Bryan, a former US Secretary of State, who had contested the presidential election on three occasions for the Democratic Party. The Civil Liberties Union hired Clarence Darrow, the greatest criminal lawyer of his time, to defend Scopes. Hundreds of journalists descended on Dayton. The courtroom was packed and a mass of people gathered in the streets outside. Food stalls were set up. Banners proclaiming "Read Your Bible" were strung across the street, to be answered by others saying "Read Your Evolution". Chimpanzees performed in a sideshow; cynics said they had been brought to town to testify for the defence.
Radio commentators, making the world's first live broadcast of a court case, portrayed the trial as a battle between good and evil. The opening statements in the courtroom were dramatic. The prosecution asked the jury to take note of the story of creation as told in the Book of Genesis. Bryan declared, "If evolution wins, Christianity goes". Darrow said the trial was "opening the doors for a reign of bigotry equal to anything in the Middle Ages".
A stream of witnesses was called. Students of Scopes testified that he had taught them that man and other mammals had descended from one-celled organisms. For the defence a Dr Maynard Metcalf, a zoologist, expounded on Darwin's theories of evolution. He was attacked by Bryan, who said Metcalf was claiming that man had descended "not even from American monkeys but Old World monkeys". Reporting on the case for the Baltimore Sun, the humorist H L Mencken, observed that the Tennessee anti-evolution law demonstrated that "the yahoos of the State had a clear right to have their progeny taught whatever they chose, and kept secure from whatever knowledge violated their superstitions". To the surprise of Mencken and other observers the court allowed Scopes's defence team to call Bryan, who was also a lay preacher, as an expert on the Bible.
Darrow asked him if he believed everything in the Bible should be literally interpreted. "I believe everything in the Bible should be accepted as given there," Bryan responded. He went on to testify that he believed Jonah was swallowed by a whale, Joshua had made the sun stand still, Noah had survived the great flood. When asked if he believed the six days of creation as recorded in the Book of Genesis were 24-hour days he said his impression was they were "periods", rather than days.
"I am glad I heard it," Mencken reported, "for otherwise I'd never believe it. There stood the man who had been thrice a candidate for the presidency of the Republic - there he stood in the glare of the world, uttering stuff that a boy of eight would laugh at." The hearing went on for 10 days and at the end the jury returned a verdict of guilty. Judge John T Raulston fined Scopes 100 dollars. (A fanciful 1960 film about the trial, Inherit the Wind, had Scopes crouching in prison as a lynch mob hollered for his neck).
A year later the Tennessee Supreme Court reversed the decision on a technicality: the fine should have been set by the jury not the judge. But instead of sending the case back for a rehearing the Supreme Court dismissed it, commenting: "Nothing is to be gained by prolonging the life of this bizarre case".