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85 the Concord Review Defining Race Copyright 2011, THEThe Concord CONCORD Review, REVIEW Inc., all rights reserved 85 DEFINING RACE: ANTEBELLUM RACIAL SCIENTISTS’ INFLUENCES ON PROSLAVERY WRITERS Gabriel Alvarez As the American abolitionist movement grew in strength in the decades leading up to the Civil War, proslavery southerners felt the need to establish a more cohesive argument in defense of their peculiar institution. This period was also host to the “first generation of American professional scientists” and the founding of the American School of Anthropology, a group of scientists dedicated to documenting the development of human beings, including how racial differences affected this development.1 These 19th century scientists professed a notion of innate differences between the races, using science to support and legitimize their preexisting worldview as members of a race-conscious society. Proslavery writers adapted these findings to their own arguments in favor of continued slavery, framing them in a way that was more accessible to the public and using science as a supposedly unbiased source of corroborating evidence. By the time of the proliferation of proslavery writers and scientists, slavery had already become heavily entrenched in the American economic and social system, a development that began just decades after the first colonies were founded on the American Gabriel Alvarez is a Senior at the Commonwealth School in Boston, Massachusetts, where he wrote this paper for Melissa Haber’s Advanced Placement United States History course in the 2010/2011 academic year. 86 Gabriel Alvarez THE CONCORD REVIEW 87 continent. Although there is some scholarly debate about the devel- when the Virginia legislature began to strip blacks of civil rights. opment of the race-based slave system in America,2 many historians However, this trend toward racism was not uniform throughout argue that the first Africans brought to America had civil rights the colony, as poor white servants do not appear to have become and a place in society somewhat equal to those of white servants, prejudiced against black slaves as quickly as the state legislators and that only later factors led to the shift from class-based to race- and other wealthy Virginians. This may be in part because poor based social differentiation in southern society.3 Early southern white servants saw many similarities between their situation and colonies had a very small black populations about which very little that of slaves, as both often suffered harsh treatment at the hands is known; Virginia, the largest southern colony at this time, likely of cruel masters.9 During Bacon’s Rebellion, white servants and had under 2,000 black inhabitants before the 1670s. This black black slaves banded together in an unsuccessful attempt to take over population was mostly made up of slaves and servants imported Virginia from Governor Berkeley; as Breen notes, “the presence from Barbados who already had at least a general knowledge of of so many black rebels…provides evidence that many Virginians the English language and the European way of life.4 Not all black in Berkeley’s time regarded economic status, not race, as the es- southerners at this time were slaves; a significant portion worked sential social distinction.”10 Along with several other historians,11 as normal indentured servants and gained freedom after four to Smedley argues that this rebellion scared wealthy Virginians into seven years of labor.5 These blacks were probably not considered developing the notion of a unified white race. According to these a separate class from servants and had some upward mobility, historians, this new worldview unified various groups of Europe- including the opportunity to become landowners, hold slaves ans that had not previously seen themselves as similar, resulting of their own, or even marry a white servant and with little social in a sharp increase in racial prejudice against non-whites.12 This stigma.6 is perhaps an oversimplification, and Breen offers other reasons In contrast with the starvation and harsh struggles that for this change, including a tobacco boom that allowed white had marked the first few decades of its existence, Virginia began indentured servants to rise out of extreme poverty and new regu- to enjoy increased prosperity by the mid-1600s. This prosperity lations in England that led to a decrease in the importation of 13 came for a number of reasons, including the achievement of a indentured servants. Also, merchants at this time began to ship more stable population and the defeat of the local Indian chief black slaves to Virginia directly from Africa, and unlike the first Powhatan, with whom Virginians had previously struggled. This Virginian slaves, these lacked any knowledge of English and ar- victory allowed Virginians access to large tracts of new land, and rived in terrible condition. These factors, Breen argues, made it in order to profit from this land, plantation owners sought a large, impossible for white servants to see anything in common between cheap labor force.7 Blacks were seen as more useful workers to their situation and that of the newly arrived slaves, and they soon 14 fill this role than other possible servant groups (such as enslaved abandoned much of their previous racial tolerance. Whatever Indians), as most had farming skills, were adapted to living in the forces were that motivated this change to a racial worldview hot climates like that of Virginia, and were resistant to Old World among southerners, in the years that followed Bacon’s rebellion, diseases. They were also unlikely to revolt due to a lack of outside race-based slavery rather than indentured servitude increasingly 15 support.8 became seen as an integral part of the southern social order. Bacon’s Rebellion of 1676 would play a large role in As the race-based slave system became more heavily en- assisting the development of racism in the southern colonies, trenched into American society during the 18th century, belief in continuing a trend that had begun at least as early as the 1660s, innate differences between human beings from different areas of 88 Gabriel Alvarez THE CONCORD REVIEW 89 the world began to gain traction with scholars from both Europe physically and mentally, placing them below whites on the Great and America. These thinkers tended to base their arguments on Chain of Being.21 religion and a closely related concept known as the Great Chain During the time of the emerging racial thinkers of the of Being. The Great Chain of Being attempted to establish a hier- mid-to-late 18th-century, the proslavery movement was not yet well archy for all living things on earth, with God at the highest point, defined, as the institution of slavery faced little attack from the 16 followed by angels, humans, animals, and plants. In 1735, Carl outside and thus did not need to be aggressively defended. Before Linnaeus, a Swedish scientist, published his Systema Naturea, which the American Revolution, the English leaders of the colonies did proposed a detailed classification of all living things based on the not dare to attack slavery due to its great economic importance notion of the Great Chain, promoting future hierarchical classifi- to the English system of mercantilism, in which the colonies were 17 cations. Building on Linnaeus’s findings, Johann Blumenbach, used to deliver raw materials for England’s production of manu- a German physician, created a widely-accepted categorization factured goods.22 In a draft of his Declaration of Independence, of humans into five distinct races. Unlike later racial thinkers, Thomas Jefferson criticized this staunch defense of slavery, citing Blumenbach, and his contemporaries adhered to the orthodox England’s refusal to allow colonists to place limits on the slave trade Christian position that God had originally created a single, white and charging the king with “suppressing every legislative attempt race of man which had “degenerated” into the five separate races to prohibit or to restrain this execrable commerce.”23 American due to environmental factors. Although Europeans pioneered this slavery faced a challenge during the Constitutional Convention of way of thinking, Americans participated in human classification 1787 from a number of abolitionist delegates but remained intact during this period as well; Samuel Smith, for example, published due to the practical arguments of the proslavery delegates, who an essay in 1787 that attempted to fix blacks’ place in nature while made up a majority (but not all) of the convention. The proslavery 18 maintaining the orthodox position of a single creation. These arguments of these delegates focused on the economic and politi- 18th-century scientists usually based their claims not on quantita- cal benefits of slavery and drew somewhat from emerging racial tive measurements but on subjective descriptions of non-whites ideologies.24 During the convention and in the early years of the 19 and cultural stereotypes. As most were writing from Europe and United States, the belief among many southerners and northerners had never seen members of any race other than their own, they alike was that slavery was doomed to die out on its own over time. tended to base their evidence on personal accounts; this second- With some exceptions, northerners tended to view the institution hand nature of their research may account for their relatively as a southern problem, abstaining from taking the type of moral- 20 moderate stance on the origin of the separate races. based action against it that they would in larger numbers during Playing on the concept of the Great Chain of Being, the mid-19th-century. Southern views on slavery were equally lack- those defending slavery in the late 18th century began to use the ing in passion during this time; as Morrison writes, “in 1790, the works of those such as Linnaeus and Blumenbach to dehumanize majority of southerners either quietly accepted the institution of blacks by comparing their characteristics to those of unintelligent chattel slavery or were apologetic about it,”25 demonstrating an animals such as primates.
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