Clarence Darrow: Attorney for the Damned (99 page)

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Eric Goldman in
Rendezvous With Destiny
(New York: Vintage, 1956), Frederic Howe in
The Confessions of a Reformer
(New York: Scribner, 1925), John Chamberlain in
Farewell to Reform
(New York: Liveright, 1932), and Richard Hofstadter in
The Age of Reform
(New York: Vintage, 1955) trace the populist and progressive roots of the reform impulse and modern liberalism. Charles Postel examines the origins of populism in
The Populist Vision
(New York: Oxford, 2007), and Robert Durden writes about the 1896 presidential campaign in
The Climax of Populism
(Lexington, KY: University of Kentucky, 1965). Michael McGerr examines the Progressive Movement in
A Fierce Discontent
(New York: Oxford, 2003). I enjoyed George Mowry’s
The Era of Theodore Roosevelt
(New York: Harper & Row, 1958). See also C. Vann Woodward’s biography
Tom Watson
(New York: Oxford, 1963) and Harvey Wish on Altgeld and the 1896 campaign in the
Mississippi Valley Historical Review
, March 1938.

Walter Lord profiles the period before World War I in
The Good Years
(New York: Harper, 1960). Lynn Dumenil’s
The Modern Temper
(New York: Macmillan, 1995) is a scholarly look at the Roaring Twenties, and Frederick Lewis Allen has entertained millions with his popular account of the decade,
Only Yesterday
(New York: Harper & Row, 1931). Another lively chronicle of an era is
Our Times
(New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1926–1935) by Mark Sullivan, a multivolume set that covers the first twenty-five years of the twentieth century. David Kennedy captures the last decade of Darrow’s life in
Freedom from Fear
(New York: Oxford, 1999). As always, I should acknowledge the influence of Paul Johnson’s
Modern Times
(New York: Harper & Row, 1983).

AUTOBIOGRAPHIES AND BIOGRAPHIES

Lincoln Steffens’s two-volume autobiography leads the pack of self-portraits from Darrow’s friends and associates. Carter Harrison Jr. gave marvelous glimpses of Chicago in Darrow’s era in the autobiographical
Stormy Years
(Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1935) and
Growing Up With Chicago
(Chicago: R. F. Seymour, 1944), and Arthur Garfield Hays wrote several memoirs, including
City Lawyer
(New York: Simon & Schuster, 1942),
Trial by Prejudice
(New York: Da Capo Press, 1970), and
Let Freedom Ring
(New York: Boni & Liveright, 1928). Edgar Lee Masters lanced Darrow in
Across Spoon River
(New York: Farrar & Rinehart, 1936).

For a wider taste of the times, and glimpses of Darrow, see the published autobiographies, memoirs, or diaries of Willis Abbott, Jane Addams, Hugh Baillie, Ethel Barrymore, William Jennings Bryan, William Burns, Oscar King Davis, Charles Erbstein, Hamlin Garland, Benjamin Gitlow, Emma Goldman, Samuel Gompers, Bill Haywood, Ben Hecht, John Jardine, James Weldon Johnson, Mother Jones (edited by Mary Field Parton), Lawrence Judd, Moses Koenigsberg, Adolf Kraus, Lucy Robins Lang, Ortie McManigal, H. L. Mencken, George Jean Nathan, Fremont Older, Harry Orchard, Margaret Parton, Theodore Roosevelt, Margaret Sanger, E. W. Scripps, Charles Siringo, Melville Stone, Walter White, William Allen White, Brand Whitlock, Victor Yarros, and Stirling Yates.

See, as well, the published letters of Brand Whitlock, Theodore Roosevelt, Lincoln Steffens, Eugene Debs, H. L. Mencken, Hamlin Garland, Louis Brandeis, and Mother Jones.

Biographies of Darrow’s friends and associates include Herbert Russell’s
Edgar Lee Masters
(Champaign, IL: University of Illinois Press, 2001) and David Levering Lewis’s
W. E. B. Du Bois
(New York: Macmillan, 2001), as well as
Samuel Gompers
(Yellow Springs, OH: Antioch Press, 1963) by Bernard Mandel,
Altgeld of Illinois
(New York: B. W. Huebsch, 1924) by Waldo Browne, and Harry Barnard on Altgeld in
Eagle Forgotten
(Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1938).

See also Craig Phelan’s biography of John Mitchell,
Divided Loyalties
(Albany: State University of New York Press, 1994), Robert Crunden’s book on Brand Whitlock,
A Hero in Spite of Himself
(New York: Knopf, 1969), Ray Ginger on Eugene Debs in
The Bending Cross
(New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1949), Chester McArthur Destler’s
Henry Demarest Lloyd and the Empire of Reform
(Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1963),
Henry Demarest Lloyd
(New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1912) by Caroline Lloyd, and
Lincoln Steffens
(New York: Simon & Schuster, 1974) by Justin Kaplan. Leroy Ashby writes on William Borah in
The Spearless Leader
(Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 1972), as does Marian McKenna in
Borah
(Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1961).

W. A. Swanberg, in
Citizen Hearst
(New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1961), and David Nasaw, in
The Chief
(Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2000), tell the story of William Randolph Hearst. Accounts of Bill Haywood’s life are provided by Peter Carlson in
Roughneck: The Life and Times of Big Bill Haywood
(New York: W. W. Norton, 1983), Joseph Conlin in
Big Bill Haywood and the Radical Union Movement
(Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 1969), and Melvyn Dubofsky in
Big Bill Haywood
(Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press, 1987). Jane Addams’s story is told in
Citizen
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005) by Louise Knight, and in
American Heroine
(New York: Oxford, 1973) by Allen Davis.

See also Sidney Fine’s
Frank Murphy
(Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1975–1984) and his biography of Walter Drew,
Without Blare of Trumpets
(Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1995);
The Damndest Radical
(Champaign, IL: University of Illinois Press, 1987), Roger Bruns’s biography of Ben Reitman; John Franch’s
Robber Baron
(Champaign, IL: University of Illinois Press, 2006), on the life of Charles Yerkes;
White
(New York: The New Press, 2003), Kenneth Janken’s volume on Walter White; and
Mencken: The American Iconoclast
(New York: Oxford, 2005) by Marion Elizabeth Rodgers.

There are several good biographies of Bryan, including Louis Koenig’s
Bryan: A Political Biography
(New York: Putnam, 1971),
A Godly Hero
by Michael Kazin (New York: Knopf, 2006), and Paolo Coletta’s three-volume
William Jennings Bryan
(Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1964–1969). Grover Cleveland’s life and presidency are ably portrayed by Allan Nevins in
Grover Cleveland: A Study in Courage
(New York: Dodd, Mead, 1934).

Other volumes that I found valuable in capturing Darrow’s times include
Morgan
(New York: HarperCollins, 2000) by Jean Strouse;
Ernest Hemingway
(New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1969) by Carlos Baker;
Lindbergh
(New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1998) by A. Scott Berg; Ron Chernow’s
Titan
(New York: Random House, 1998), about John D. Rockefeller; and
Andrew Carnegie
(New York: Penguin, 2006) by David Nasaw. Also of interest are
Triangle
, David Von Drehle’s account of the tragic fire (New York: Grove Press, 2003);
American Eve
(New York: Riverhead, 2008), Paula Uruburu’s biography of Evelyn Nesbit; Jacob Riis’s
How the Other Half Lives
(New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1914); and Bruce Watson’s
Sacco & Vanzetti
(New York: Viking, 2007).

I was schooled in law by Henry J. Abraham and relied on the lessons he taught me and his book
Freedom and the Court
(New York: Oxford, 1972). Any errors are mine, not his. The novels of Sinclair Lewis, Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Theodore Dreiser, E. L. Doctorow, Booth Tarkington, Gore Vidal, and Upton Sinclair helped me paint the backdrop, as did, of course, the verse of Carl Sandburg.

WEB SITES

The Clarence Darrow Digital Collection of the University of Minnesota Law Library is the indispensable online resource. Almost as helpful are Douglas Linder’s University of Missouri–Kansas City site
Famous Trials
and Northwestern University’s
Homicide in Chicago
site.

The Web site of the Public Broadcasting System offers transcripts and exhibits from several documentaries about Darrow and his times, including fine
American Experience
productions on Chicago and the Scopes and Massie trials. The
American Heritage
site offers articles on Earl Rogers, the Sweet trials, and other subjects relevant to Darrow. Idaho Public Television has a top-notch site on the Haywood trial called
Assassination: Idaho’s Trial of the Century
.

The online
Encyclopedia of Chicago
, maintained by the Chicago History Museum, the Newberry Library, and Northwestern University, was very helpful, as was Scott Newman’s
Jazz Age Chicago
and two sites maintained by nonprofessional historians:
The Chicago History Journal
site of the indefatigable Sharon Williams, and the
Idaho Meanderings
site, maintained by John Richards, a descendant of Frank Steunenberg.

INDEX