Background
John Tate Raulston was born in Marion County, Tennessee, the son of William Doran Raulston, a farmer, and Comfort Matilda Tate.
John Tate Raulston was born in Marion County, Tennessee, the son of William Doran Raulston, a farmer, and Comfort Matilda Tate.
He was educated in country schools, and attended Tennessee Wesleyan College and the University of Chattanooga while reading law in the office of William D. Spear, at Jasper.
Although admitted to the bar in 1896, Raulston taught school for four years before beginning an independent practice in Whitwell. From 1902 to 1904 he served as a Republican in the state legislature. Thereafter he practiced law with Alan S. Kelly, in South Pittsburg, until 1918.
In 1918 Raulston was elected judge of the seven counties in the Eighteenth District. He rode circuit until 1926. Following World War I, attacks by William Jennings Bryan and others on the theory of evolution provoked into uproarious division and commotion the scientific and academic as well as religious communities. Raulston became involved in this controversy as the judge in the famous Scopes "monkey" trial.
By 1925, various southern states had passed laws prohibiting the use of textbooks sympathetic to the theory of evolution. The Tennessee law, first to explicitly "prohibit the teaching of evolution in public schools, " assessed penalties for its infringement of between $100 and $500. Upon learning that the American Civil Liberties Union had offered to finance a test case of the law, one George W. Rappelyea framed a case by asking the head of the Dayton school board and the county superintendent of schools to sue John T. Scopes, a substitute Rhea County high school teacher, for having taught the theory of evolution. Scopes acted from no motive other than testing the law in the name of academic freedom and freedom of thought. John Randolph Neal and John L. Godsy, and later District Attorney General Arthur Thomas Stewart, served as defense counsel; Sue K. Hicks and Wallace C. Haggard, as prosecutors. When Bryan joined the latter, he elevated what might have been a petty local case into a national and even international affair; Clarence Darrow and Dudley Field Malone joined the defense specifically because he was on the other side.
On May 9, 1925, a preliminary hearing by three justices of the peace held that Scopes was "at least technically if not intentionally guilty. " Two weeks later Raulston charged a grand jury "to ascertain whether or not the law has been violated. " When the jury returned a true bill, he scheduled the trial to begin on July 10 so that it might be closed by the time school began in August. Although the question was Scopes's guilt, the defense hoped to discredit fundamentalist religion. Bryan's objective was equally clear. "If evolution wins in Dayton, " he said, "Christianity goes. .. for the two cannot stand together. "
In a hippodrome atmosphere concocted by Dayton's boosters and in a heat wave that drove the thermometer to over 100°, Raulston faced the defending "colonels" on one side and prosecuting "generals" on the other. In his opening, during which he read the law and also the first chapter of Genesis, he charged the jury to decide only whether Scopes had violated the law. The wisdom of the law was not at issue. He also cautioned that expression of emotion from spectators would not be permitted. To decide whether the defense could introduce testimony by theological scholars and scientists, he adjourned court until July 13, when he faced a motion to quash Scopes's indictment. Two days later he denied the motion. Although pressed by the defense to permit the submission of expert scientific testimony, he denied the request, whereupon Darrow mocked him.
On July 20, Raulston cited Darrow for "contempt and insult. " After Darrow apologized, he forgave him. But by permitting Bryan, a prosecution counsel, to sit as witness for the defense, he let Darrow expose Bryan's lack of scientific knowledge. Moreover, he denied Bryan a chance to rebut. Raulston charged the jury that if Scopes were found guilty he could be fined only from $100 to $500 and that if he were found guilty but no amount of fine were set, the fine would be $100. The jury found Scopes guilty but deferred to Raulston on the fine. He set it at $100. Because state law provided that no jury could assess a fine larger than $50, Raulston was considered to have made an error, which later enabled the state supreme court on appeal to dispose of the case on a technicality.
Raulston at the time thought the antievolution law was properly framed. Later he questioned whether its ambiguous wording truly represented the intent of the legislature but still held that the state has the right to determine the curriculum for public instruction.
Failing of reelection as judge in 1926, Raulston resumed his law practice, eventually with the firm of Raulston, Raulston, and Swafford, with which he was associated until his retirement in 1952. Although he practiced both civil and criminal law, his forte was land law; in this connection he was retained by such large corporations as the U. S. Steel Corporation, Brush Creek Coal Company, Tennessee Coal, Iron and Railroad Company, and Nashville, Chattanooga, and St. Louis Railway Company.
He died in South Pittsburg, Tennessee.
He was president of the Marion County Bar Association from 1933 to 1952, a member of the Tennessee and American bar associations, and a thirty-second-degree Mason.
A large, energetic man who dressed well, Raulston neither drank, smoked, nor cursed. He worked hard, accumulated a sizable estate, and won a reputation for being penurious.
In August 1908, he married Estelle Otto Faller. They had one daughter. His wife died in 1916, and on April 1, 1922, he married Eva Davis. The marriage was childless.
