The Darwinism Debate in America Was Personal

In Gray‘s essays, there was another angle of attack that could have been more lethal from our perspective. Agassiz held that white people were at the top of God’s race-stacking hierarchy since races were formed distinct and as unchangeable as animal species. The Darwin biographer Janet Browne pointed out that despite his opposition to slavery, his books “lent scientific authority to those determined to defend the slave system.” Gray attacked Agassiz’s pseudoscientific racism, pointing out that he, like Darwin, was against slavery. In reference to the branching human genealogy suggested by Darwin’s theory of descent, Gray remarked, “The very first step backwards makes the Negro and the Hottentot our blood-relations.” “Pride may object, but neither reason nor Scripture opposes that.” Gray implied that if man sprang from a common ancestor, then perhaps there was a closer connection between a particular biologist and the Black people who rejected him than the zoologist would have liked to think. It’s possible that Gray wrote the remark about “pride” thinking of Agassiz’s horrified response.