DOCSLIB.ORG

Religion, White Supremacy, and the Politics of Darwinism in America

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
Religion, White Supremacy, and the Politics of Darwinism in America UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, SAN DIEGO There's Power in the Blood: Religion, White Supremacy, and the Politics of Darwinism in America A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree Doctor of Philosophy in Political Science by Richard Allen Bolar Committee in charge: Professor Alan Houston, Chair Professor Harvey Goldman Professor Gerry Mackie Professor Tracy Strong Professor Charles Thorpe 2014 Copyright Richard Allen Bolar, 2014 All rights reserved The Dissertation of Richard Allen Bolar is approved, and it is acceptable in quality and form for publication on microfilm and electronically: Chair University of California, San Diego 2014 iii Dedication For Jami iv Table of Contents Signature Page ...................................................................................................................................... iii Dedication ............................................................................................................................................ iv Table of Contents ................................................................................................................................. v List of Figures and Tables ................................................................................................................. vii Acknowledgements ........................................................................................................................... viii Vita ........................................................................................................................................................ xi Abstract of the Dissertation ............................................................................................................. xii Chapter 1 The Four Traditional Stories of Evolution in America.................................................. 1 Introduction .......................................................................................................... 1 1 Literature Review: Four Traditional Narratives .................................................................. 2 Evolution and Culture ............................................................................................................ 4 Evolution and Class ................................................................................................................ 6 Evolution and Education ....................................................................................................... 9 Evolution and Religion ......................................................................................................... 12 So, What Then Was It? ......................................................................................................... 17 Chapter 2 The New World of American Science, 1770-1830 ........................................................ 30 Introduction ........................................................................................................................... 30 A Peculiarly American Science ............................................................................................ 32 America and the Classification of the Natural World ...................................................... 39 The Slavery Debate and the Need for a Scientific Proslavery Defense ........................ 60 Conclusion .............................................................................................................................. 67 Chapter 3 Scientists and Slaveholders: Proslavery Orthodoxy and Proslavery Science, 1830-60 . 69 Introduction ........................................................................................................................... 69 Knowledge and the Value of Scientific Expertise ............................................................ 70 Before Darwin: Science in the American South ............................................................... 79 Science and the Proslavery Argument ................................................................................ 86 Religion as a Bulwark of Slavery ......................................................................................... 91 Science as a Bulwark of Slavery ........................................................................................... 96 The Turn of Blumenbach..................................................................................................... 99 Phrenology............................................................................................................................ 101 Polygeny: The American School of Anthropology ........................................................ 103 Conclusion ............................................................................................................................ 110 Chapter 4 A Brother and a Man: Darwin and the Politics of Race in America, 1860-1880 ......... 113 Introduction ......................................................................................................................... 113 Politics, Culture, and Scientific Authority ........................................................................ 115 The Formation of the Southern Civil Religion ............................................................... 118 v Science, North and South .................................................................................................. 126 Religious Attitudes to Darwinism ..................................................................................... 140 The Politics of Science ........................................................................................................ 148 The Opposition to Darwinism .......................................................................................... 166 Darwin and Class ................................................................................................................. 181 Rival Versions of Natural History: Establishment and Radical .................................... 184 After Darwin: Reaction and Acceptance ......................................................................... 187 Conclusion ............................................................................................................................ 189 Appendix .............................................................................................................................. 191 Chapter 5 Progress, Social Darwinism, and Eugenics ............................................................... 194 Introduction ......................................................................................................................... 194 Social Darwinism, Eugenics, and Scientific Racism ....................................................... 200 Social Darwinism and Darwin in America ...................................................................... 203 Eugenics and Darwin in America ..................................................................................... 215 Conclusion ............................................................................................................................ 230 Chapter 6 Anti-Evolutionism, White Supremacy, and the Power in the Blood ......................... 232 Introduction ......................................................................................................................... 232 Mencken and the Backwardness of Southern Culture ................................................... 236 Religion and the Anti-Evolution Movement ................................................................... 243 The Social Gospel and the Anti-Evolution Movement ................................................. 258 Race and the Anti-Evolution Movement ......................................................................... 268 Race, Religion, and the Southern Civil Religion ............................................................. 271 Fundamentalism, Race, and the Anti-Evolution Movement ........................................ 278 Conclusion ............................................................................................................................ 297 Chapter 7 Science, the Nature of Race, and the Road to Loving ............................................... 302 Pure Races and Unnatural Unions .................................................................................... 302 Evolution, Science, and the Undermining of "Race" ..................................................... 310 Conclusion ............................................................................................................................ 324 Bibliography ............................................................................................................... 328 vi List of Figures and Tables Table 4-1: Political beliefs of NAS Naturalists, 1863-1900 ....................................................... 139 Table 4-2: Political beliefs of NAS Naturalists, 1863-1900 without unclears ........................ 139 Figure 4-3: "Am I Not a Man and a Brother" ............................................................................ 191 Table 4-4: Evolutionists Beliefs about White Supremacy ......................................................... 191 Table 4-5: Neo-Lamarckians' Beliefs about White Supremacy ................................................ 192 Table 4-6: Creationists' Beliefs about White Supremacy .......................................................... 193 Table
Load more

Recommended publications
  • Race and Membership in American History: the Eugenics Movement
    Race and Membership in American History: The Eugenics Movement Facing History and Ourselves National Foundation, Inc. Brookline, Massachusetts Eugenicstextfinal.qxp 11/6/2006 10:05 AM Page 2 For permission to reproduce the following photographs, posters, and charts in this book, grateful acknowledgement is made to the following: Cover: “Mixed Types of Uncivilized Peoples” from Truman State University. (Image #1028 from Cold Spring Harbor Eugenics Archive, http://www.eugenics archive.org/eugenics/). Fitter Family Contest winners, Kansas State Fair, from American Philosophical Society (image #94 at http://www.amphilsoc.org/ library/guides/eugenics.htm). Ellis Island image from the Library of Congress. Petrus Camper’s illustration of “facial angles” from The Works of the Late Professor Camper by Thomas Cogan, M.D., London: Dilly, 1794. Inside: p. 45: The Works of the Late Professor Camper by Thomas Cogan, M.D., London: Dilly, 1794. 51: “Observations on the Size of the Brain in Various Races and Families of Man” by Samuel Morton. Proceedings of the Academy of Natural Sciences, vol. 4, 1849. 74: The American Philosophical Society. 77: Heredity in Relation to Eugenics, Charles Davenport. New York: Henry Holt &Co., 1911. 99: Special Collections and Preservation Division, Chicago Public Library. 116: The Missouri Historical Society. 119: The Daughters of Edward Darley Boit, 1882; John Singer Sargent, American (1856-1925). Oil on canvas; 87 3/8 x 87 5/8 in. (221.9 x 222.6 cm.). Gift of Mary Louisa Boit, Julia Overing Boit, Jane Hubbard Boit, and Florence D. Boit in memory of their father, Edward Darley Boit, 19.124.
    [Show full text]
  • The 1925 Monkey Trial
    The “Monkey Trial” March 1925. • On 21st March 1925 Tennessee passed the Butler Act which stated: • That it shall be unlawful for any teacher in any of the Universities, Normals and all other public schools of the State which are supported in whole or in part by the public school funds of the State, to teach any theory that denies the Story of the Divine Creation of man as taught in the Bible, and to teach instead that man has descended from a lower order of animals. Proposer of the act: John Washington Butler. Religion vs. Science. • (State Representative) John W. Butler, a Tennessee farmer and head of the World Christian Fundamentals Association, lobbied state legislatures to pass the anti-evolution law. The act is challenged. • John Thomas Scopes' involvement in the so-called Scopes Monkey Trial came about after the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) announced that it would finance a test case challenging the constitutionality of the Butler Act if they could find a Tennessee teacher willing to act as a defendant. • Photograph of John Scopes taken one month before the trial. Opportunistic Bush Lawyers? • A band of businessmen in Dayton, Tennessee, led by engineer and geologist George Rappleyea, saw this as an opportunity to get publicity for their town and approached Scopes. • Rappleyea pointed out that while the Butler Act prohibited the teaching of human evolution, the state required teachers to use the assigned textbook, Hunter's Civic Biology (1914), which included a chapter on evolution. • Rappleyea argued that teachers were essentially required to break the law.
    [Show full text]
  • The Colonial Roots of the Racial Fetishization of Black Women
    Black & Gold Volume 2 Article 2 2016 The oloniC al Roots of the Racial Fetishization of Black Women Caren M. Holmes College of Wooster Follow this and additional works at: https://openworks.wooster.edu/blackandgold Part of the African American Studies Commons, and the Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Commons Recommended Citation Holmes, Caren M. (2016) "The oC lonial Roots of the Racial Fetishization of Black Women," Black & Gold: Vol. 2. Available at: https://openworks.wooster.edu/blackandgold/vol2/iss1/2 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by Open Works. It has been accepted for inclusion in Black & Gold by an authorized administrator of Open Works. For more information, please contact [email protected]. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License. Holmes: The Colonial Roots of the Racial Fetishization of Black Women The Colonial Era: The narrative of New World imperialism was eroticized by rhetoric that sexualized the imperialist practices of European colonizers. Documentation of the British conquest is riddled with language that suggests the sexual nature of the land and of its discovery. In his travel logs, Columbus suggested that the earth is shaped like a woman’s breast (Mclinktok, 2001). The New World was frequently described as “virgin land” by colonizers, wrongly suggesting an empty and uninhabited territory (Mclinktok, 2001). This patriarchal narrative of imperialization depicts the New World through rhetoric normally ascribed to women, suggesting the land’s passive and submissive nature, awaiting the conquest of men. This romancization was used to validate the conquest of the land itself, precluding the sexualization of the women made victim by these imperialist mindsets.
    [Show full text]
  • Downloaded from Brill.Com09/28/2021 01:47:18PM Via Free Access Bibliography
    Bibliography Abramowitz, E. W., ‘Historical Points of Interest on the Mode of Action and Ill Effects of Mercury’, Bulletin of the New York Academy of Medicine, x (1934), 695-705 Ackerknecht, E. H., ‘Aspects of the History of Therapeutics’, Bulletin of the History of Medicine , xxxvi (1962), 389-419 Ackerknecht, E. H., ‘Die therapeutische Erfahrung und ihre allmähliche Objektivierung’, Gesnerus, xxvi (1969), 26-35 Ackerknecht, E. H., Malaria in the Upper Mississippi Valley 1760-1900 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1945) Ackerknecht, E. H., Therapeutics from the Primitives to the 20th Century (New York: Hafner Press, 1973) Ackerknecht, E. H., Therapie von den Primitiven bis zum 20. Jahrhundert (Stuttgart: F. Enke Verlag, 1970) Aikin, J., ‘The History of an Uncommon Swelling of the Arm, which, after Threatening a General Gangrene, Terminated Favourably’, Medical and Philosophical Commentaries , ii (1774), 417-9 Aikin, J., Thoughts on Hospitals. With a Letter to the Author, by Thomas Percival, MD FRS (London: J. Johnson, 1771) Aldrovandi, U., Historiae serpentum et draconum libri duo (Bologna: M. A. Bernia, 1640) Alexander, W., ‘Experiments with Camphire’, Philosophical Transactions , lvii (1767), 65-71 Alexander, W., Experimental Essays (London: E. and C. Dilly, 1768) Allan, D. G. C. and R. E. Schofield, Stephen Hales: Scientist and Philanthropist (London: Scolar Press, 1980) Alpin, P., La Médecine des Egyptiens , 2 vols, transl. from Latin and ed. by R. de Fenoyl (Cairo: Institut Français d’Arché ologie Orientale, 1980) Alston, C., ‘A Dissertation on Opium’, Medical Essays and Observations , v/1 (1742), 110-76 Alston, C., ‘Eine Abhandlung von dem Opio’, in Die medicinischen Versuche und Bemerkungen, welche von einer Gesellschaft in Edinburgh durchgesehen und herausgegeben werden , vol.
    [Show full text]
  • Alfred Russel Wallace and the Darwinian Species Concept
    Gayana 73(2): Suplemento, 2009 ISSN 0717-652X ALFRED RUSSEL WALLACE AND THE Darwinian SPECIES CONCEPT: HIS paper ON THE swallowtail BUTTERFLIES (PAPILIONIDAE) OF 1865 ALFRED RUSSEL WALLACE Y EL concepto darwiniano DE ESPECIE: SU TRABAJO DE 1865 SOBRE MARIPOSAS papilio (PAPILIONIDAE) Jam ES MA LLET 1 Galton Laboratory, Department of Biology, University College London, 4 Stephenson Way, London UK, NW1 2HE E-mail: [email protected] Abstract Soon after his return from the Malay Archipelago, Alfred Russel Wallace published one of his most significant papers. The paper used butterflies of the family Papilionidae as a model system for testing evolutionary hypotheses, and included a revision of the Papilionidae of the region, as well as the description of some 20 new species. Wallace argued that the Papilionidae were the most advanced butterflies, against some of his colleagues such as Bates and Trimen who had claimed that the Nymphalidae were more advanced because of their possession of vestigial forelegs. In a very important section, Wallace laid out what is perhaps the clearest Darwinist definition of the differences between species, geographic subspecies, and local ‘varieties.’ He also discussed the relationship of these taxonomic categories to what is now termed ‘reproductive isolation.’ While accepting reproductive isolation as a cause of species, he rejected it as a definition. Instead, species were recognized as forms that overlap spatially and lack intermediates. However, this morphological distinctness argument breaks down for discrete polymorphisms, and Wallace clearly emphasised the conspecificity of non-mimetic males and female Batesian mimetic morphs in Papilio polytes, and also in P.
    [Show full text]
  • Brahmanical Patriarchy and Voices from Below: Ambedkar's Characterization of Women's Emancipation
    Open Political Science, 2020; 3: 175–182 Research Article Harsha Senanayake*, Samarth Trigunayat Brahmanical Patriarchy and Voices from Below: Ambedkar‘s Characterization of Women’s Emancipation https://doi.org/10.1515/openps-2020-0014 received May 8, 2020; accepted June 2, 2020. Abstract: Western feminism created a revolution on the international stage urging the world to look at things through the perspective of women who were historically suppressed because of their gender, yet in many instances, it failed to address the issue of women in the Indian subcontinent because of the existence of social hierarchies that are alien concepts to the western world. As a result, the impact of western feminist thinkers was limited to only the elites in the Indian subcontinent. The idea of social hierarchy is infamously unique to the South Asian context and hence, in the view of the authors, this evil has to be fought through homegrown approaches which have to address these double disadvantages that women suffer in this part of the world. While many have tried to characterize Ambedkar’s political and social philosophy into one of the ideological labels, his philosophy was essentially ‘a persistent attempt to think things through’. It becomes important here to understand what made Ambedkar different from others; what was his social condition and his status in a hierarchal Hindu Society. As a matter of his epistemology, his research and contribution did not merely stem from any particular compartmentalized consideration of politics or society, rather it encompassed the contemporary socio-political reality taking into consideration other intersectionalities like gender and caste.
    [Show full text]
  • Book Review of "Darwinism" by Alfred Russel Wallace
    Transcription, January 2015: The Times (London) No. 32801 (11 Sept. 1889): 12a-12b (anon.). [p. 12a] ‘Darwinism.’1 It would be impossible to overrate the service which Mr. Wallace, the co-discoverer of Darwinism, has done in publishing this volume; nor can we overlook the magnanimity displayed in his undertaking the task which he has so successfully accomplished. It is 30 years since Darwin published his work “On the Origin of Species by means of Natural Selection, and the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life.” We need not recall the excitement caused at the time by its publication, nor the extent to which it has influenced all thought. Darwin himself developed and modified to some slight extent the doctrines of his initial volume in a further series of works giving the results of half a century of patient and keen investigation; so that any one desirous of understanding precisely what Darwinism is, as it left the hands of its author, would have to study some 20 volumes of minute research and close reasoning. Very few, however, it is to be feared, go to the original source for their knowledge of what Darwinism is. The majority even of intelligent people pick up this knowledge in casual ways, and learn what Darwinism is, not directly from its author, but from others, who, from ignorance, prejudice, or self-conceit, are inadequate or misleading expounders of the doctrine. The doctrine was scarcely launched into the world of thought before the friends and the disciples of its author, under the pretext of improving upon it or rendering it more adequate to explain the facts, subjected it to all sorts of modification, pressed it into all forms of curious moulds of their own invention, which the world generally has uninquiringly accepted as “Darwinism.” Few of these interpreters or supplementers of the original theory have had the patience of the master; what Darwin attained after the drudgery of a lifetime, they have in the main attempted to evolve from their own consciousness.
    [Show full text]
  • Henry and Nancy Rosin Collection of Early Photography of Japan
    Henry and Nancy Rosin Collection of Early Photography of Japan Freer Gallery of Art and Arthur M. Sackler Gallery Archives Washington, D.C. 20013 [email protected] https://www.freersackler.si.edu/research/archives/ Table of Contents Collection Overview ........................................................................................................ 1 Administrative Information .............................................................................................. 1 Local Numbers................................................................................................................. 2 Arrangement..................................................................................................................... 2 Scope and Contents........................................................................................................ 1 Biographical / Historical.................................................................................................... 1 Names and Subjects ...................................................................................................... 2 Container Listing ............................................................................................................. 3 Series FSA A1999.35 A1: Photo album from the studio of Adolpho Farsari, [1860 - ca. 1900]................................................................................................................... 3 Series FSA A1999.35 A2: Photo album from the studio of Tamamura, [1860 - ca. 1900]......................................................................................................................
    [Show full text]
  • Biography of Augustus Addison Gould
    BIOGRAPHICAL MEMOIR AUGUSTUS ADDISON GOULD. 1805-1866. JEFFRIES WYMAN. WITH ADDITIONS BY WILLIAM HEALEY DALL. READ BBFORE THE NATIONAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES, A PHIL 22, 1903. (8) 91 BIOGRAPHICAL MEMOIR OF AUGUSTUS ADDISON GOULD. The subject of this memoir descended from true pioneer stock and since heredity, especially of men of eminence, has a scien- tific as well as a personal interest, it is well to include here a brief notice of his lineage, derived from family documents. The earliest ancestors noted are Zaccheus Gould, of Boving- don, Herts, England, who emigrated to America about 1638 and died, aged 81, in 1670; and John Durant, or Duren, supposed French Huguenot, who emigrated in November, 1659, and in 1670 married Susannah Dalton. One of the Durens, grandfather of our late associate, was a builder of note and designed a truss bridge which he erected over Pawtucket Falls, near Lowell, Mass., one of the earliest self-supporting bridges built in this country. His son, Nathaniel Gould Duren, was born in Bedford, Mass., in 1781, and when eleven years of age went to live with a maternal uncle at New Ipswich, N. H. This uncle, Nathaniel Gould, adopted his nephew, whose name was changed by legal process to Nathaniel Duren Gould. Young Gould, November 15, 1801, married Sally Andrews Prichard, of Welsh extraction, whose ancestors were among the earliest settlers of Old Rowley, now Boxford, Mass. This marriage was blessed with eight children, three of whom died in infancy. The second child and first survivor, born at New Ipswich, April 23, 1805, was AUGUSTUS ADDTSON GOULD, the subject of this memoir.
    [Show full text]
  • George P. Merrill Collection, Circa 1800-1930 and Undated
    George P. Merrill Collection, circa 1800-1930 and undated Finding aid prepared by Smithsonian Institution Archives Smithsonian Institution Archives Washington, D.C. Contact us at [email protected] Table of Contents Collection Overview ........................................................................................................ 1 Administrative Information .............................................................................................. 1 Historical Note.................................................................................................................. 1 Descriptive Entry.............................................................................................................. 2 Names and Subjects ...................................................................................................... 3 Container Listing ............................................................................................................. 4 Series 1: PHOTOGRAPHS, CORRESPONDENCE AND RELATED MATERIAL CONCERNING INDIVIDUAL GEOLOGISTS AND SCIENTISTS, CIRCA 1800-1920................................................................................................................. 4 Series 2: PHOTOGRAPHS OF GROUPS OF GEOLOGISTS, SCIENTISTS AND SMITHSONIAN STAFF, CIRCA 1860-1930........................................................... 30 Series 3: PHOTOGRAPHS OF THE UNITED STATES GEOLOGICAL AND GEOGRAPHICAL SURVEY OF THE TERRITORIES (HAYDEN SURVEYS), CIRCA 1871-1877..............................................................................................................
    [Show full text]
  • London Conference on Intelligence 2015
    LONDON’S GLOBAL UNIVERSITY London Conference on Intelligence 2015 Prof Charles Spearman, UCL 1863 – 1945 London Conference on Intelligence 2015 Friday 8 May 2 pm Meeting speakers 3:50 Welcome and Introduction. J Thompson 4:00 By their words ye shall know them. MA Woodley of Menie, HBF Fernandes, AJ Figueredo, G Meisenberg 4:30 Evolution versus culture in international intelligence differences. H Rindermann 5:00 Tea 5:30 Plenary discussion with previous speakers 6:15 Guided London walk (12 minutes) to The Marquis Cornwallis, 31 Marchmont Street, London WC1N 1AP for your choice of pub drinks and gastro-pub food. Saturday 9 May 9:30 Spearman’s Hypothesis: Hypothesis or Law? M van den Hoek, J te Nijenhuis 10:00 Androgen Levels and K theory. E Dutton 10:30 Race and sex differences in occupational achievement. H Nyborg 11:00 Coffee 11:30 Spearman’s hypothesis tested on group differences in personality. J te Nijenhuis 12:00 Admixture in the Americas. J Fuerst, E Kirkegaard 12:30 Meta-analysis of Roma intelligence. D Jurasek, J te Nijenhuis, J Cvorovic 1:00 Plenary discussion with previous speakers 1:30 Lunch break 2:30 Darwin’s “Altruistic Words” Versus Wordsum “Easy Words” and “Hard Words”. AJ Figueredo, HBF Fernandes, M Woodley of Menie, G Madison 3:00 General and domain-related effects of prenatal methylmercury exposure. F Debes. 3:30 In chimpanzees, more g-loaded cognitive abilities are more heritable, evolvable, and exhibit more inter-individual variability. H Fernandes, MA Woodley of Menie, W Hopkins. 4:00 Tea 4:30 Intelligence is correlated with higher non-verbal ability.
    [Show full text]
  • Sarah Elizabeth Jackson: an Occasional Diary
    Sarah Elizabeth Jackson An Occasional Diary 1906-1918 This book is available as a free fully searchable ebook from www.adelaide.edu.au/press The Letters of Sarah Elizabeth Jackson (1910-1922) with an introduction by Barbara Wall Published in Adelaide by University of Adelaide Press Barr Smith Library The University of Adelaide South Australia 5005 [email protected] www.adelaide.edu.au/press The Barr Smith Press is an imprint of the University of Adelaide Press, under which titles about the history of the University are published. The University of Adelaide Press publishes peer‑reviewed scholarly books. It aims to maximise access to the best research by publishing works through the internet as free downloads and for sale as high‑quality printed volumes. © 2018 Barbara Wall for the Introduction This work is licenced under the Creative Commons Attribution‑NonCommercial‑ NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY‑NC‑ND 4.0) License. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by‑nc‑nd/4.0 or send a letter to Creative Commons, 444 Castro Street, Suite 900, Mountain View, California, 94041, USA. This licence allows for the copying, distribution, display and performance of this work for non‑commercial purposes providing the work is clearly attributed to the copyright holders. Address all inquiries to the Director at the above address. For the full Cataloguing‑in‑Publication data please contact the National Library of Australia: [email protected] ISBN (ebook: pdf): 978‑1‑925261‑85‑1 DOI: https://doi.org/10.20851/jackson‑diary Book design: Midland Typesetters Cover design: Emma Spoehr Cover image: University of Adelaide Archives, Series 1388, Elizabeth Jackson BA (1911), Photographer Van Dyck.
    [Show full text]