202 Kansas Academy of Science. 



1851, and the abolition question was warming to the terrible 

 crisis of ten years later. Vehement discussions arose, theology 

 furnished weapons to both sides from the first, and science was 

 at length dragged into the strife. Proslavery was coupled with 

 polygenistic ideas and emancipation with the monogenistic 

 faith, but this association was arbitrary. Slavery had been 

 sanctioned and practiced by monogenistic peoples for centuries, 

 and vice versa. But what mattered the past? The religious 

 societies of England had carried emancipation by the cry of 

 the brotherhood of man and the idea of the common origin of 

 all the races with Adam. This cry was echoed by the abolition- 

 ists of the United States. The slavery party were, in a man- 

 ner, crowded into the polygenistic theory, and for a time the 

 controversy seemed limited to a scientific basis. The fate of 

 the negro in this country seemed to hang upon the opinion of 

 legislators as to the effect of an African sun upon human in- 

 teguments, and the differences between the sections of the 

 hair of the white and black races. The disciples of Morton 

 were attacked fiercely by some and unduly praised by others, 

 they being polygenists but not all slavery men. The question 

 brought out essays and memoirs from the hands of Morton 

 and his followers that have remained as interesting writings 

 to us. 



Nott and Gliddon's Types of Mankind and Indigenous Races 

 are good examples of the ethnological books that were written 

 during those times, which were devoted to the defense of the 

 theory of the diversity of the origin of mankind and inci- 

 dentally of slavery. A curious anecdote they relate will illus- 

 trate this idea. In the introduction of the Types of Mankind, 

 the authors say: "The proposition of the diversity of the 

 origin of mankind was long known to the master mind of Jno. 

 C. Calhoun, secretary of state. In an interview with Mr. Glid- 

 don he complained that England pertinaciously continued to 

 interfere with our inherited institution of negro slavery, in a 

 manner that rendered it necessary to indict strong protesta- 

 tions through our ambassador. So he sent for Mr. Gliddon, 

 who was then United States consul to Egypt, on account of his 

 knowledge of African ethnology and his writings on the sub- 

 ject, for information. Mr. Gliddon referred the great states- 

 man to Doctor Morton, with whom a correspondence ensued 

 and whose books he read. Mr. Calhoun was confirmed in his 

 opinion, from his study of history, of the doctrine of the di- 



