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Chapter 1:
The Races of Man
A few years ago someone showed me a statement from a common school biology textbook written during the early part of the 1900s that stated:
“The Races of Man. - At the present time there exist upon the earth five races or varieties of man, each very different from the other in instincts, social customs, and to an extent, in structure. These are the the Ethiopia or negro type, originating in Africa; the Malay or brown race, from the islands of the Pacific; the American Indian; the Mongolian or yellow race, including the natives of China, Japan, and the Eskimos; and finally, the highest type of all, the Caucasians, represented by the civilized white inhabitants of Europe and America.” (A Civic Biology: Presented in Problems, by George William Hunter, 1911, p196)
My first though was, no wonder there’s racism, it was taught in the schools that Caucasians, or white people, were the highest order of all the races. No big surprise where the term “white supremacist’ comes from.
I finally tracked down this textbook, found the actual quote and bought one of these books off the internet. Interestingly, the paragraph right before this was:
“Evolution of Man. - Undoubtedly there once lived upon the earth races of men who were much lower in their mental organization than the present inhabitants. If we follow the early history of man upon earth, we find that at first he must have been a little better off than one or the lower animals……The beginnings of civilization were long ago, but even to-day the earth is not entirely civilized.”
I can only believe the author was implying that, through the ‘Evolution of Man’, the earth is not entirely civilized, except for the highest race of all, the white people of Europe and America. I was surprised at how long had this teaching of Evolution and, dare I say, teaching of white supremacy been going on surprised even me.
As I started to do research, I felt like I finally had answers to questions I’ve had for a long time. For instance, the question I’ve always had in my mind about how the Founding Fathers could write in the Declaration of Independence that:
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.” U.S. Declaration of Independence, para. 2.
At the same time many owned slaves and denied those slaves their liberty. And, conversely, many of the founding fathers were abolitionists that abhorred slavery and tried to end it. I’ll cover this topic in chapter 3.
Chapter 2:
The Age of Enlightenment
For my research, I started around the founding of the United States in the 1700s, which coincided with a push by scientists to separate people into different racial categories. The scientists called this era the “Age of Enlightenment” or the “Age of Reason”.
Growing up I was taught ‘the theory of evolution’. I remember taking field trips to the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History and being inundated with evolutionary beliefs. During all this teaching about evolution, Charles Darwin’s name always came up and I believed he was the founder of the theory of evolution because of his books that discussed natural selection, The Origin of Species, published in 1859, and The Descent of Man, published in 1871.
I was surprised about how long this teaching had been going on and that Charles Darwin was not the founder or father of evolutionary thinking. He just popularized it. This teaching went back around the time of the Greek philosophers, but really started to take hold when the United States became a country in 1776 during the “Age of Enlightenment”.
In fact, the Harvard Museum of Natural History held a lecture, “Who Discovered Evolution”, by William Friedman on March 3, 2020. The lecture was described as:
“Charles Darwin is commonly cited as the person who “discovered” evolution. But, the historical record shows that roughly seven different individuals published work on the topic of evolution between 1748 and 1859, the year that Darwin published On the Origin of Species. These early thinkers, now almost entirely forgotten, included biologists, geologists, horticulturists, physicians, clergymen, atheists, philosophers, teachers, and poets.”
So, what were these early thinkers writing? I don’t know the names of the seven different individuals that William Friedman referred to, but here are some quotes from some prominent ‘early thinkers’ that I found.
Baron de Montesquieu (1689-1755), a French philosopher wrote this racist rant about slaves not being men in The Spirit of Laws (1748), Chapter V. Of the Slavery of the Negroes:
“Were I to vindicate our right to make slaves of the negroes, these should be my arguments: The Europeans, having extirpated the Americans, were obliged to make slaves of the Africans, for clearing such vast tracts of land…….These creatures are all over black, and with such a flat nose that they can scarcely be pitied. It is hardly to be believed that God, who is a wise Being, should place a soul especially a good soul, in such a black, ugly body…….It is impossible for us to suppose these creatures to be men….” Baron de Montesquieu: The Complete Works, vol. 1 The Spirit of Laws, London: T. Evans, 1748, Chapter V. Of the Slavery of the Negroes, para. 1
Remember the last sentence of that quote when I later discuss in Chapter 3 the phrase in the Declaration of Independence, “all men are created equal”.
Carl Linnaeus (1707-1778) wrote numerous editions of his most famous work, System Naturae (Systems of Nature) with the 10th edition published in 1758. He divides the human species into four types, or varieties; Europeaus albus, Americanus rubescents, Asiaticus fuscus, and Africans niger. These types correspond with the four continents of; Europe, America, Asia and Africa. It goes really downhill in his 10th edition when he starts describing the different types. Where the Europeaus are described as “White, sanguine (cheerful), muscular” and as “light, wise, inventor”, the Africanus are described as black, phlegmatic (unemotional), lazy” and as “sly, sluggish, neglectful”.
To the credit of today’s Linnean Society they acknowledged that Linnaeus had a “role in the origins of modern scientific racism”. On their website they define scientific racism:
“Scientific Racism is the use of science to offer reasons why racism is justified. Scientific racism can have devastating and far-reaching consequences for humanity, Including seeing non-Europeans as less human than Europeans, and justifying the use of slavery and genocide (The killing of entire populations).…..Believing that other populations hold inferior traits to your own is the starting point of many genocidal stories, and so it is undeniable that this work by Linnaeus was a dangerous tool for future generations to build on”. Linnaeus and Race, Linnean Society website, para. 3-4.
Johann Blumenbach (1752-1840) did a vast amount of research in the measurement of human skulls which led him to classify humans into five families—Caucasian, Mongolian, Malayan, Ethiopian, and American. In Origin, A Genetic History of the Americas, 2022, pages 30-32, Jennifer Raff, the author, writes;
“Whether people should be classified into categories was not questioned, nor was the system for ranking races by their innate qualities. To early European scientists, it was obvious that the European type was superior, and the African type was the lowest. The other types - including the Native Americans - fell somewhere in between.
Measuring skull dimensions became a popular means of dividing people into racial. categories fairly quickly, an approach know as craniometry.”
“Blumenbach was one of the first people to actually apply scientific evidence - skull measurements - toward a classification scheme and was a proponent of monogenism, the notion God created a single race - Caucasian - and that different racial types were “degenerated” from Caucasians as the result of migrating into new environments over many generations.”
”While Blumenbach did not believe that non-Caucasians were intellectually inferior, he did believe that the Caucasians were the “most perfect” race because of the proportions of their skulls.” Jennifer Raff: Origin, A Genetic History of the Americas, Twelve, 2022, pages 30-32
Chapter 3:
All Men are Created Equal
So, back to the phrase in the Declaration of Independence, “all men are created equal”.
If the slave owners were being influenced by these early scientists, it would follow that the word, “men”, in this phrase did not apply to their slaves. Remember the quote from Montesquieu, “It is impossible for us to suppose these creatures to be men….”.
While the northern states, after winning independence from the British, were in the process of banning slavery, the southern colonies were holding fast to their way of life; one dependent on slavery. But, with the start of the freeing of slaves in the northern states, abolitionist societies to end slavery starting in the north, the debates that ensued and the phrase in the Declaration of Independence, “all men are created equal”, the slave owners were, in a way, put on the defensive.
My belief is that the slave owners had a convenient excuse for the ownership of other humans, they were believing the early scientists that the slaves were not men and they were a lower form of race. It gave them an out. If my belief is correct, then it would follow that we would see this belief in the writings and speeches of people leading up to the Civil War, which is exactly what I found.
In a collection of letters by a man named Junius, he writes in 1858 and tells what happened when he loaned an anti-slavery book to someone. It was returned with the statement:
“the book is a tissue of nonsense; its doctrines are most ludicrous; if they are carried out, we shall have to admit the colored people to an equality with us, and call them brother and sister; and what would the world think of us?” Maryland Slavery and MarylandChivalry, Legare Street Press, February 3,1858, page 20
In the next letter dated March 10, 1858, Junius then writes about:
“A wealthy member of our church who, as I understand, holds the opinion that negroes are a link between the orang outang and human being, that they have no souls, and consequently are not accountable”. March 10, 1858, page 22
In the first quote, ‘colored people’ are seen as a lower type, or race of person. But, the second quote is racist to the core and definitely of the belief that they are not ‘men’.
The next quote is from a letter written in 1850 from a South Carolina doctor, H. Haynsworth, writing to Mr. Stowell in Massachusetts about a slave that had escaped. Haynsworth is writing on behalf of the slave owner:
“…an put in our midst a race of beings whose skin so perfectly represents the cupidity (greed) and blackness of their hearts, they are ready to see our throats cut and if necessary, to help do it. I sincerely believe the negroes, as a class of laborers, are the most happy class of beings in the world.” “A Slaveholder’s Letter,” (probably from a Northampton, MA newspaper) 1850, American Antiquarian Society website, para. 4.
The main part of the quote is the idea of a race that is being depicted as evil. I added the last sentence in there to show their mindset. Haynsworth is oblivious to his own evil.
Probably, Alexander Stephens, the Vice President of the Confederacy, in a speech given March 21, 1861 put it best. Right at the start of the Civil War he gave a speech in Savannah, Georgia about the new government, The Confederate States of America, but first talks about Thomas Jefferson and the founding fathers:
“The prevailing ideas entertained by him (Thomas Jefferson) and most of the leading statesmen at the time of the formation of the old constitution, were that the enslavement of the African was in violation of the laws of nature; that it was wrong in principle, socially, morally, and politically. It was an evil they knew not well how to deal with…….They rested upon the assumption of the equality of races.” Alexander H. Stephens, Cornerstone Speech, American Battlefield Trust website, 1861, para. 3
After this, Stephens then compares the new Confederate government to the U.S. government (with the old constitution):
“Our new government is founded upon exactly the opposite idea; its foundations are laid, its corner-stone rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery - subordination to the superior race - is his natural and normal condition. This, our new government, is the first, in the history of the world, based upon this great physical, philosophical, and moral truth.” Para. 4.
It doesn’t get any more to the point – that slaves are an inferior race to the superior white race. The evolutionary beliefs of the “early thinkers” had definitely crept into the slave owner’s mind’s to justify their ownership of slaves.
