102 THE MISMEASURE OF MANagainst ideologues as barriers to their pure search for truth, but
their targets were parsons more often than abolitionists. Their the-
ory, in asserting a plurality of human creations, contradicted the
doctrine of a single Adam and contravened the literal truth of
scripture. Although the leading polygenists held a diversity of reli-
gious attitudes, none were atheists. Morton and Agassiz were con-
ventionally devout, but they did believe that both science and
religion would be aided if untrained parsons kept their noses out
of scientific issues and stopped proferring the Bible as a document
to settle debates in natural history. Josiah Nott stated his goal in a
forceful way (Agassiz and Morton would not have put it so baldly):
"... to cut loose the natural history of mankind from the Bible,
and to place each upon its own foundation, where it may remainwithout collision or molestation" (in Stanton, ig6o, p. 119).
The polygenists forced defenders of slavery into a quandary:
Should they accept a strong argument from science at the cost of
limiting religion's sphere? In resolving this dilemma, the Bible usu-
ally won. After all, scriptural arguments for supporting slavery
were not wanting. Degeneration of blacks under the curse of Ham
was an old and eminently functional standby. Moreover, polygeny
was not the only quasi-scientific defense available.
John Bachman, for example, was a South Carolina parson and
prominent naturalist. As a committed monogenist, he spent a good
part of his scientific career attempting to refute polygeny. He also
used monogenist principles to defend slavery:
In intellectual power the African is an inferior variety of our species.
His whole history affords evidence that he is incapable of self-government.
Our child that we lead by the hand, and who looks to us for protection and
support is still of our own blood notwithstanding his weakness and igno-
rance (in Stanton, i960, p. 63).
Among nonpolygenist, "scientific" defenses of slavery, no argu-
ments ever matched in absurdity the doctrines of S. A. Cartwright,
a prominent Southern physician. (I do not cite these as typical and
I doubt that many intelligent Southerners paid them much atten-
tion; I merely wish to illustrate an extreme within the range of
"scientific" argument.) Cartwright traced the problems of black
people to inadequate decarbonization of blood in the lungs (insuf-
ficient removal of carbon dioxide): "It is the defective... atmo-
spherization of the blood, conjoined with a deficiency of cerebral