USPS William Jennings Bryan & Scopes Monkey Trial

USPS on 19 March 1986 issued a First Day Cover stamp and cachet commemorating William Jennings Bryan and the Scopes Trial. Postmark cancellation on this FDC cachet originated from Cave-in-Rock, Illinois. Another FDC cancellation (not shown here) originated from Salem, Illinois, the birthplace of William Jennings Bryan.

Tom Broad designed the stamp. It was one the first stamps released in the Great American Series which included 64 patriots. The stamp had a $2 face value and was released on Bryan’s 126th birthday. One fun fact about the stamp is that it had the longest name in the series; so long that it needed to wrap around two sides of the stamp. A total of 57,250,000 were printed by Bureau of Engraving and Printing.

The cachet on the envelope depicted the core conflict of the Scopes 'Monkey Trial' by illustrating "Evolution" on the left (showing early humans and fire) and "Creation" on the right (showing Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden).

William Jennings Bryan, U.S. Congressman for Nebraska, three-time Democrat presidential candidate and former secretary of state under President Woodrow Wilson, argued for the prosecution, while famed labour and criminal lawyer Clarence Darrow served as the principal defense attorney for Scopes.  This landmark legal case in Tennessee debated the legality of teaching evolution in public schools.

High school teacher, John T. Scopes, was accused of violating the Butler Act, a Tennessee state law which outlawed the teaching of human evolution in public schools. The trial was deliberately staged in order to attract publicity to the small town of Dayton, Tennessee, where it was held. Scopes was unsure whether he had ever actually taught evolution, but he incriminated himself deliberately so the case could have a defendant. Scopes was represented by the American Civil Liberties Union, which had offered to defend anyone accused of violating the Butler Act in an effort to challenge the constitutionality of the law.

Scopes was found guilty and was fined $100 (equivalent to $1,800 in 2024), but the verdict was overturned on a technicality. 

William Jennings Bryan elicited mixed views during his lifetime and his legacy remains debated amongst historians. That said,  many recognise he played a major role in shaping U.S. public policies for more than 40 years. Known as “The Great Commoner,” William Jennings Bryan  is remembered for his impassioned speeches on a variety of topics, including anti-trust, anti-imperialism, prohibition, populism, and trust-busting. 

He is best known for his role in the Scopes Trial, hence the cachet design. Since his death in 1925 -- a week after the trial and in Dayton (Tennessee), incidentally -- scholars have warmed to his motives, if not his actions in the Scopes Trial because he rejected eugenics, a practice that many evolutionists of the 1920s favoured.

Source: Wikipedia and Mystic Stamps