The Clarence Darrow Digital Collection
Written letter from Clarence Darrow collection
Collage of Clarence Darrow at different ages Postcard from Clarence Darrow Collection

Clarence Darrow Signature

The Clarence Darrow Letters

James Hamilton Lewis to Clarence Darrow, February 10, 1918


Click on the image to view as a PDF. A transcription of the letter is on the right.

Saturday Midnight, February 9 1918

Dear Darrow,


This is midnight. I am in the library of this club - (a very full collection - and near my house) and I again think of a letter that has been in my heart for you for two months and more.


First it is to congratulate you that your place has at last been admitted by your home people (the last ever to admit a son's capabilities - while he lives) - (Also, I felicitate you on the brave and noble move you took

to let those d-nd ingrates - sometimes called "labor" - unjustly - sometimes slandered as "union men" or called Socialists - who submitted you to the humiliation of the Los Angeles trials - and would have degraded you if they could - you let them know how independent you were of them? how defiant of them you stood. Your great Auditorium speech was an Epoch. It started you anew on a new course as did Gladstone's home rule - Peel on Corn tax - and Wilson on Democracy. All your speeches [?] the State lent

increased the already exalted Estimate of you? Now your many successes - have in all put you where lawyers dream to sometime stand. The ultra hope of highest ambition - the first place as advocate and forensic orator of a state - the equal of any in a nation. Great. Good luck - in everything. With best wishes and remembrances of other days.

[?] Clarence S. Darrow

Your friend [?] Hamilton Lewis

Official Free            Hamilton Lewis


Hon Clarence S. Darrow


Chicago, Illinois