Read Online A Religious Orgy in Tennessee by H.L. Mencken - Free Book Online
Authors: H.L. Mencken
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yokels. You probably laughed at the prohibitionists, say, back in 1914. Well, donât make the same error twice.
As I have said, Bryan understands these peasants, and they understand him. He is a bit mangey and flea-bitten, but by no means ready for his harp. He may last five years, ten years or even longer. What he may accomplish in that time, seen here at close range, looms up immensely larger than it appears to a city man five hundred miles away. The fellow is full of such bitter, implacable hatreds that they radiate from him like heat from a stove. He hates the learning that he cannot grasp. He hates those who sneer at him. He hates, in general, all who stand apart from his own pathetic commonness. And the yokels hate with him, some of them almost as bitterly as he does himself. They are willing and eager to follow himâand he has already given them a taste of blood.
Darrowâs peroration yesterday was interrupted by Judge Raulston, but the force of it got into the air nevertheless. This year it is a misdemeanor for a country school teacher to flout the archaic nonsense of Genesis. Next year it will be a felony. The year after the net will be spread wider. Pedagogues, after all, are small game; thereare larger birds to snareâlarger and juicier. Bryan has his fishy eye on them. He will fetch them if his mind lasts, and the lamp holds out to burn. No man with a mouth like that ever lets go. Nor ever lacks followers.
Tennessee is bearing the brunt of the first attack simply because the civilized minority, down here, is extraordinarily pusillanimous.
I have met no educated man who is not ashamed of the ridicule that has fallen upon the State, and I have met none, save only Judge Neal, who had the courage to speak out while it was yet time. No Tennessee counsel of any importance came into the case until yesterday and then they came in stepping very softly as if taking a brief for sense were a dangerous matter. When Bryan did his first rampaging here all these men were silent.
They had known for years what was going on in the hills. They knew what the country preachers were preachingâwhat degraded nonsense was being rammed and hammered into yokel skulls. But they were afraid to go out against the imposture while it was in the making, and when any outsider denounced it they fell upon him violently as an enemy of Tennessee.
Now Tennessee is paying for that poltroonery. The State is smiling and beautiful, and of late it has begun to be rich. I know of no American city that is set in morelovely scenery than Chattanooga, or that has more charming homes. The civilized minority is as large here, I believe, as anywhere else.
It has made a city of splendid material comforts and kept it in order. But it has neglected in the past the unpleasant business of following what was going on in the crossroads Little Bethels.
The Baptist preachers ranted unchallenged.
Their buffooneries were mistaken for humor. Now the clowns turn out to be armed, and have begun to shoot.
In his argument yesterday Judge Neal had to admit pathetically that it was hopeless to fight for a repeal of the anti-evolution law. The Legislature of Tennessee, like the Legislature of every other American state, is made up of cheap job-seekers and ignoramuses.
The Governor of the State is a politician ten times cheaper and trashier. It is vain to look for relief from such men. If the State is to be saved at all, it must be saved by the courts. For one, I have little hope of relief in that direction, despite Haysâ logic and Darrowâs eloquence. Constitutions, in America, no longer mean what they say. To mention the Bill of Rights is to be damned as a Red.
The rabble is in the saddle, and down here it makes its first campaign under a general beside whom Wat Tylor * seems like a wart beside the Matterhorn.
* Leader of the 1381 Peasantsâ Revolt against King Richard II
IX
Law and Freedom, Mencken Discovers, Yield Place to Holy Writ in
As I have said, Bryan understands these peasants, and they understand him. He is a bit mangey and flea-bitten, but by no means ready for his harp. He may last five years, ten years or even longer. What he may accomplish in that time, seen here at close range, looms up immensely larger than it appears to a city man five hundred miles away. The fellow is full of such bitter, implacable hatreds that they radiate from him like heat from a stove. He hates the learning that he cannot grasp. He hates those who sneer at him. He hates, in general, all who stand apart from his own pathetic commonness. And the yokels hate with him, some of them almost as bitterly as he does himself. They are willing and eager to follow himâand he has already given them a taste of blood.
Darrowâs peroration yesterday was interrupted by Judge Raulston, but the force of it got into the air nevertheless. This year it is a misdemeanor for a country school teacher to flout the archaic nonsense of Genesis. Next year it will be a felony. The year after the net will be spread wider. Pedagogues, after all, are small game; thereare larger birds to snareâlarger and juicier. Bryan has his fishy eye on them. He will fetch them if his mind lasts, and the lamp holds out to burn. No man with a mouth like that ever lets go. Nor ever lacks followers.
Tennessee is bearing the brunt of the first attack simply because the civilized minority, down here, is extraordinarily pusillanimous.
I have met no educated man who is not ashamed of the ridicule that has fallen upon the State, and I have met none, save only Judge Neal, who had the courage to speak out while it was yet time. No Tennessee counsel of any importance came into the case until yesterday and then they came in stepping very softly as if taking a brief for sense were a dangerous matter. When Bryan did his first rampaging here all these men were silent.
They had known for years what was going on in the hills. They knew what the country preachers were preachingâwhat degraded nonsense was being rammed and hammered into yokel skulls. But they were afraid to go out against the imposture while it was in the making, and when any outsider denounced it they fell upon him violently as an enemy of Tennessee.
Now Tennessee is paying for that poltroonery. The State is smiling and beautiful, and of late it has begun to be rich. I know of no American city that is set in morelovely scenery than Chattanooga, or that has more charming homes. The civilized minority is as large here, I believe, as anywhere else.
It has made a city of splendid material comforts and kept it in order. But it has neglected in the past the unpleasant business of following what was going on in the crossroads Little Bethels.
The Baptist preachers ranted unchallenged.
Their buffooneries were mistaken for humor. Now the clowns turn out to be armed, and have begun to shoot.
In his argument yesterday Judge Neal had to admit pathetically that it was hopeless to fight for a repeal of the anti-evolution law. The Legislature of Tennessee, like the Legislature of every other American state, is made up of cheap job-seekers and ignoramuses.
The Governor of the State is a politician ten times cheaper and trashier. It is vain to look for relief from such men. If the State is to be saved at all, it must be saved by the courts. For one, I have little hope of relief in that direction, despite Haysâ logic and Darrowâs eloquence. Constitutions, in America, no longer mean what they say. To mention the Bill of Rights is to be damned as a Red.
The rabble is in the saddle, and down here it makes its first campaign under a general beside whom Wat Tylor * seems like a wart beside the Matterhorn.
* Leader of the 1381 Peasantsâ Revolt against King Richard II
IX
Law and Freedom, Mencken Discovers, Yield Place to Holy Writ in
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