Bryan’s undelivered speech was what he proposed to say in the concluding arguments. The trial had dragged on so long that the judge and the prosecution were eager for its conclusion. The defense, which had spent so much time in the trial objecting and arguing procedure, and had used a great part of the seventh day on the testimony of Bryan, at last agreed to end the trial by having the jury instructed to find the defendant guilty. They wanted to make sure there was a verdict so that the case could be appealed. They also wanted to conclude without arguments in order to stop Bryan from delivering his speech. Bryan protested to no avail.
So it came to pass that the golden-tongued orator had to resort to passing out copies of his speech, hoping they would be distributed. His audience could not be his captive. He appealed to the press which had so eagerly transmitted the report of Darrow’s triumph the day before to do him justice and also broadcast his speech. But what appeal would an undelivered speech have? Scopes’ two sentence comment on the verdict held more appeal.
Bryan was not allowed to play the part he would have played. The only great speech Bryan actually delivered was the one that was followed and surpassed by the most rousing speech of the whole trial. Bryan’s speech was followed by Malone’s great speech. As Saul’s thousands to David’s ten thousands, so was the applause for Bryan to the clamor and tumult for Malone’s.
And it was a pity that Bryan’s undelivered speech should not have made it into the trial, for it was a good speech. He used Darrow’s very argument from the notorious trial of Loeb and Leopold against him in that speech. Bryan argued persuasively against evolution and for the right of the citizens to keep public funds from being spent on the propagation of an error. Had the trial been an argument over ideas, Bryan would have made his case. But the trouble from the start was that this trial which began as a publicity stunt for Dayton, never managed to take on the dignity of a legal dispute. And the fault was Bryan’s.
William Jennings Bryan was a magnet for the press. When he volunteered his services the local attorneys were delighted, for he would draw a great deal of publicity to their town. The whole trial began when a citizen read of the anti-evolution law in the newspaper and went down to the drugstore to announce to the fellows gathered there he had found the thing to put Dayton on the map. They got their wish. But sensation rather than careful thinking is what gathers up the crowd. A spectacle gets more notoriety than sober deliberation. How could truth have had a chance? To make the setting a court of law only made the trial so much more a mockery. And the worthy citizens of Dayton would never have been able to draw the interest had they not had Bryan there. Bryan was the only piece without which the trial of the century would have only been an ordinary trial. And Bryan came of his own accord.
And Bryan fell of his own accord. He would have helped the prosecution better had he simply stayed away, heeding te misgivings of his wife. He could have mailed his undelivered speech and probably gotten for it a better effect than he obtained by passing it out afterward. So Bryan lost his last campaign, and he had his last meal, and he was gathered to his fathers.

The defense lost the case on the sixth day of the trial when the judge ruled against admitting the testimony of expert witnesses. The defense went to trial in order to test the law, and so all of their strategy consisted in casting doubt on the wording and interpretation of the law. The defense needed expert witnesses in order to show the law was unreasonable, or, failing that, to demonstrate how the law still allowed for the teaching of evolution by showing that it did not necessarily contradict the teaching of the Bible. The prosecution merely argued that the law was adequate and straightforward. They wanted to find Scopes guilty in order to ensure nobody else would teach evolution in Tennessee.
By the seventh day of the Scopes trial it had descended to a very prolonged wrangle over everything possible. It was not a day of rest, especially for the prosecution; and the defense did not care to rest. Although the defense saw the case was lost, the prosecution was not about to admit a single concession to the end. Neither side was willing to yield anything on anything disputed, and everything was disputed. The bickering took place even over which translation of the Bible would be admitted as evidence. One of the points which was debated long, had to do with the question of finding the Bible compatible with evolution. Most of the early proceedings of that seventh day had to do with an argument over the manner in which the testimony of expert witnesses, which was already excluded from the trial, was to be put into the record for the sake of the appeal. The defense wanted to read these statements: statements by churchmen and scientists regarding the interpretation of the Bible and its compatibility with evolution. For the statute in dispute read that no theory of origins could be taught contrary to the Bible. The prosecution did not want this read aloud, they said it should be filed. They did not want the matter before the court and the public. They would not yield to the defense in any point, for the defense had no small talent for exploiting the smallest advantage.
In all this quarreling there was always a solidarity among the lawyers for each side. Those on the defense rose in turn or complemented what another one was arguing. For the prosecution it was the same way until it came to the fatal question of allowing Bryan to testify under the examination of Darrow. Attorney General Stewart who led the team of the prosecution objected to the testimony at least five times during the course of it. But the reason the judge overruled Stewart’s objections was not that the defense had a good reason for examining Bryan, but rather that Bryan allowed it. And this is where the defense won the case even though they lost the trial. What, then, was the reason for which Bryan took the stand? He wanted the world to know he was not afraid. He answered Darrow “to shut his mouth so that could not go out and tell his atheistic friends that I would not answer his question.” It was bravado.
And they wrestled with each other there in Dayton Tennessee. Darrow tried to lead Bryan into a mistake and Bryan tried to wrest the interrogation away from Darrow with long answers. It was a torturous and exhausting back-and-forth, a meeting and jousting of wills and words as these two old men who had lived and earned their life by their speaking met to culminate the protracted argument. Darrow’s ability at examination was unmatched. Bryan was the golden-tongued orator, a mover of people. Darrow wanted to keep Bryan confused and kept interrupting him with questions. Bryan didn’t want to go as quickly, he wanted enough space to speak in cadences of rolling rhythm and moving intonation. So they laid hold of each other as wrestlers and struggled back and forth across the platform in Tennessee, before the world.
Darrow had even agreed to let Bryan examine him as fully as he did Bryan. Bryan, however, seems to have lost sight of this. His part could have been merely to answer and to wait. But he would not wait. He could not keep his equanimity, and he had never been an angry speaker. He had been a notorious pacifist for many years already. He had spoken in charged situations, certainly, but not attacking. His gift was to win people over to his cause.
Darrow was also snarling at Bryan when the court adjourned. But Darrow was not on the side of the angels. And Darrow had gotten what he needed from his expert witness, thus winning the wrestling match. For he had managed to reveal that Bryan believed that the days of Genesis might well have been long ages. To allow for Genesis to be interpreted in such a way was enough to make the Bible compatible with evolution. And this was all that the defense needed its expert witnesses to prove.