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Samuel Morton, Josiah Nott, and the Origins of the ‘American School’: Authority, Genius, and Systems-Building in Nineteenth Century Ethnology

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Samuel Morton, Josiah Nott, and the Origins of the ‘American School’: Authority, Genius, and Systems-Building in Nineteenth Century Ethnology ABSTRACT Title of Document: SAMUEL MORTON, JOSIAH NOTT, AND THE ORIGINS OF THE ‘AMERICAN SCHOOL’: AUTHORITY, GENIUS, AND SYSTEMS-BUILDING IN NINETEENTH CENTURY ETHNOLOGY Christopher Richard Donohue, MA, 2009 Directed By: Associate Professor Whitman H. Ridgway, Department of History This thesis traces the origin and development of the “American School” of ethnology from the natural historical debate over the nature of hybridity and the definition of species between the naturalist John Bachman and the ethnologist Samuel George Morton to the posthumous management of Samuel Morton’s reputation and authority by the physician and ethnologist Josiah Nott and his collaborators in Types of Mankind for the purposes of establishing themselves as ethnological authorities in their own right. SAMUEL MORTON, JOSIAH NOTT, AND THE ORIGINS OF THE ‘AMERICAN SCHOOL’: AUTHORITY, GENIUS, AND SYSTEMS-BUILDING IN NINETEENTH CENTURY ETHNOLOGY By Christopher R. Donohue Thesis submitted to the Faculty of the Graduate School of the University of Maryland, College Park, in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts 2009 Advisory Committee: Associate Professor Whitman H. Ridgway, Chair Assistant Professor Erika Milam Dr. William Thomas © Copyright by Christopher Richard Donohue 2009 Table of Contents Table of Contents…………………………………………………iv Chapter 1- Introduction ………………………………………….1 Chapter 2- The Morton-Bachman Debate: Hybridity and the Limits of Inquiry, 1847- 1850………………………………………………………………19 Chapter 3- Types of Mankind: Systems-Building and the Arguments of Morton’s “School”…………………………………………………………..55 Chapter 4- Conclusion……………………………………………102 Bibliography…………....................................................................112 ii Introduction This thesis traces the origin and development of the “American School” of ethnology from the natural historical debate over the nature of hybridity and the definition of species between the naturalist John Bachman and the ethnologist Samuel George Morton 1 to the posthumous management of Samuel Morton’s reputation and authority by the physician and ethnologist Josiah Nott and his collaborators in Types of Mankind for the purposes of establishing themselves as ethnological authorities in their own right. This narrow debate over the question of species and the nature of hybridity went to the issue of who could be a naturalist or an ethnologist in America due to the amateur nature of American science and the intellectual practices of natural history and ethnology in the mid-nineteenth century. American science in the 1840s and 1850s had developed in such a manner so that there was no universally recognized body for the granting of expertise or authority, especially in the realm of ethnological inquiry. As there was no centralized patronage or disciplinary bodies in the United States, such as the Royal Society in Britain or the British Association for the Advancement of Science, natural historians and ethnologists cultivated their reputations as truthful arbiters of scientific fact, managed through a small set of periodicals and institute publications and a select number of appointments in academic spaces, to control vast networks of suppliers of natural historical specimens. Such networks allowed ethnologists and naturalists to produce and to improve their work. If scientists and the public praised such a work, as 1 See Claude Blanckaert, “Of Monstrous Métis” in The Color of Liberty, Histories of Race in France (Duke University Press, 2003) especially, pg. 54ff. 1 “science,” as a truthful account of the complexities of nature, as was the case with Morton’s 1839 Crania Americana , an ethnographic work on ancient Mesoamericans, the naturalist or ethnologist could move forward in his endeavor, making his narrative ever more detailed and authoritative. The work of the geologist, physician, and ethnologist Samuel George Morton (1799- 1851) on the nature of hybridity- in which he argued for the ability of members of distinct, though closely related species, to produce fertile offspring- was perceived as going immediately to the very serious issue of whether human beings were one species or many. By arguing for the proliferation of hybrids, Morton was able, according to Claude Blanckaert, to “obliterate” the “classical objection” objection of the “monogenists” who “justified the order of nature by the mutual aversion of individuals belonging to separate species.” Morton was opposed in these conclusions by the South Carolina naturalist and theologian John Bachman (1790- 1874) who upheld not only the existence of mutual repugnance between members of closely related species but also considered fertility among members to be the mark of species. Bachman’s natural historical conclusions supported a larger theological system of ideas that argued for not only the unitary species identity of human kind but also for the veracity of the account of the book of Genesis. Furthermore, by disagreeing with Bachman and criticizing the authorities that he deployed in order to structure his arguments, Morton established himself as a natural historical authority in his own right. That an issue such as taxonomy and the manner 2 in which “species” was defined went to questions of theology and the place of man in the order of nature points to a fundamental feature of natural historical argumentation, that of an interlocking “system” of arguments. In these systems, claims against one element of the system -the definition of species provided by monogenesist naturalists and ethnographers- go to the integrity of the larger theological claims. The two main chapters of the thesis- the first concerning the debate over hybridity and the understanding of species in antebellum natural history and ethnology, the second concerning the posthumous use of the authority and “genius” 2 of Samuel George Morton by Josiah Nott and his collaborators to found an “American School” of ethnology- provide critical insights into the nature and construction of authority and the presentation of “authoritative” arguments in antebellum science. These elements are visible in these contexts due to an intellectual environment defined by competing natural historical and ethnological systems, divided over the question as to the original unity or diversity of human kind as well as the exact mechanism behind biological change in nature. 2 There is an extensive literature on the rhetorical and strategic uses of “genius” in scientific narrative. Most important for the argument of this thesis are Simon Schaffer’s “Scientific Discoveries and the End of Natural Philosophy,” in Social Studies of Science , and “Genius in Romantic Natural Philosophy,” in Romanticism and the Sciences , ed. Andrew Cunningham and Nicholas Jardine (Cambridge University Press, 1990) as well as Richard Yeo’s, “Genius, Method, and Morality: Images of Newton in Britain,” in Science in Context . These relate the construction of scientific genius to the promotion of specific research programs, pedagogies, methodologies, and the defense of specific institutional and professional arrangements. Jan Golinski in his Science as Public Culture: Chemistry and Enlightenment in Britain (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992) narrates how the chemist Humphry Davy deployed the public persona of a “genius” in order to promote his specific instrumentation methods and research agenda as well as to gain access to scarce scientific resources. Davy’s program and his emphasis on the genius discoverer was also an effort to discount the chemistry and radical philosophy of Joseph Priestly. 3 Before Darwin’s Descent of Man (1871) and the principle of natural selection and the discovery of biological vehicles for the transmission of heritable characteristics in 1890 by August Weismann, 3 there existed no consensus on the exact mechanism underlying human differences. Advocates of biological change by the action of climate or “civilization,” such as the enlightenment naturalist Comte de Buffon, Baron Montesquieu, the philosopher Immanuel Kant, and the Victorian ethnologist James Prichard, and those who believed in the propagation of distinct “types”, such as the French philosopher Voltaire, the enlightened historian Lord Kames, Samuel Morton, and Josiah Nott, could both marshal varieties of evidence to support their positions. Historians have termed the position of Buffon, Montesquieu, Kant, and Prichard, as “monogenesis,” as it argued for the species identity of human beings and the creation of all human beings in a single divine act. In opposition to this was the doctrine of “polygenesis,” which emphasized the multiplicity of human species. Polygenesist naturalists believed in the existence of originally, separately created “types,” “races” or stocks, and as importantly, discounted the characterization of “species” as defined the fertility of subsequent generations of offspring. Moreover, polygenesist naturalists and ethnologists underscored the persistence of hybrids in nature and the differing mechanisms through which members of closely allied species overcame “mutual repugnance.” Monogenesis was the natural historical “orthodoxy” as it could trace an undiminished lineage from the older enlightened natural and civil history into 3 On Weismann, see Carl L. Degler, In Search of Human Nature (Oxford University Press US, 1992), chapter 1, “Invoking the Darwinian Imperative.” 4 the early nineteenth century, with advocates in Baron Cuvier, J. F. Blumenbach, and Petrus Camper, all founders of the discipline
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