Darwinian theories of human evolution top the list of scientific ideas that challenged the thinking of religious Americans in the nineteenth century. The sheer volume of historiography of the Darwinian controversies so monopolizes our understanding of the historical relationship between science and religion that the existence of a heated debate about human origins antedating Origin of Species has all but escaped notice. William Stanton told of the rise of polygenic theory of racial origins many years ago in his The Leopard's Spots. Though he argued that this theory of the separate origins of the various human races or "types of mankind" dominated scientific thinking in the decades before the Civil War, little attention has been paid to polygenism or the controversy around it since Stanton's work. This dissertation research project picks up from Stanton's work and will provide two important correctives to his story. First, it will examine his claim that Protestant Americans found polygenism too contrary to their theology and understanding of the Bible to favor it in any way. The meager evidence Stanton provided cannot support such a broad claim. Further doubt arises from the fact that pre-adamism, a theological twin to science of polygenesis, was used by certain conservative Evangelicals at the end of the century and into the twentieth century to accommodate the growing evidence of human prehistory. Second, Stanton's claim that the rise of Darwinism cut short influence of polygenism has already been questioned by several historians. This study will describe the fortunes of polygenism and its opposition well past the advent of Darwinism. This study will also depart from Stanton's in methodology. He examined the work of the intellectuals. By means of an extensive survey of popular religious periodicals, primarily the weekly religious newspapers, the attempt will be made to assess and describe the "unity" debate as it was understood by lay people. Polygenism not only challenged their conventional views on religion and the Bible, but it also bore on some of the most critical social issues of the day, slavery and the "Indian" issue, and thus was not contained within an intramural scientific dispute. Because the weekly newspapers targeted specific readers this approach will reveal the responses of blacks, whites, and natives Americans, northerners and southerners, Jews, Catholics, Protestants and their various denominational flavors. The objective is to understand what happened to polygenic race theory within popular religious culture both before and after the rise of Darwinism.
