Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

‘Am I Not a Man and a Brother?’ Phrenology and Anti-slavery

2008; Frank Cass & Co.; Volume: 29; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/01440390802027780

1743-9523

Cynthia S. Hamilton,

Race, History, and American Society

Abstract It would be a mistake to dismiss the pseudo-science of phrenology as merely discredited, populist and racist. African American proponents and opponents, as well as those engaged in the debate over slavery, recognised the utility of phrenology, made more potent by a notional objectivity that helped to obscure the highly partisan aesthetic standards, sociological assumptions and ideological posturing thoroughly embedded within its theoretical framework. As a result, this discourse was fought over, subverted and appropriated by those arguing over slavery and trying to define and interpret the concepts of race and racial difference. Acknowledgements I gratefully acknowledge the generosity of the American Antiquarian Society for permission to reproduce two illustrations from The Slave's Friend. I would also like to thank the Rothermere American Institute of Oxford University for providing me with the space and access to resources necessary for writing this article. I was a Senior Visiting Fellow from January 2005 through July 2006, and have held an Associate Fellowship from August 2006. Earlier versions of this article were presented at the Rothermere American Institute, the Conference of the Collegium for African American Research in Madrid, 2007, and at a special symposium at the University of Nottingham. Notes 1. See Tomlinson (Head Masters), Cooter (Cultural Meaning) and Van Wyhe (Phrenology). Van Wyhe discusses the way phrenology encouraged a more empirical approach within the sciences by looking for explanations of phenomena based on physical properties and the evidence of nature. 2. See Tomlinson (Head Masters) for a discussion of the way phrenology influenced progressive social thought in the United States, particularly through Horace Mann and Samuel Gridley Howe. Tomlinson also deals with phrenology's influence on Owen's thinking, as does Roger Cooter (Cultural Meaning) in his chapter 'On Standing Socialism on its Head'. 3. See Burne's The Teetotaler's Companion. George Combe, Charles Caldwell and O. S. Fowler were among the phrenologists who pushed the cause of temperance. Fowler published an essay on temperance, which the American Phrenological Journal reviewed (see Anon, "Miscellany" (1841)). In this review, the Journal noted that the pamphlet was based on a lecture Fowler had given. Phrenologists warned of the terrible impact of intemperance not only on the individual concerned, but also on their children. The debility brought on through intemperance, it was suggested, could be passed down to children as an inherited trait. 4. See, e.g., Hungerford ('Poe and Phrenology'), Wilson ('Phrenology and the Transcendentalists'), Conroy ('Emerson and Phrenology), Aspiz ('Phrenologizing the Whale') and Stoehr ('Physiognomy and Phrenology in Hawthorne'). 5. This is only the first of five verses (see Alligator, 'Phrenology'). 6. See, e.g., Oedel and Gernes ('"The Painter's Triumph"'), Colbert (A Measure of Perfection) and Hartley (Physiognomy). 7. Dating the images is problematic. The American Antiquarian Society currently dates the fourth volume of The Slave's Friend as 1839, but places a question mark next to the date. The date given for the images on the University of Virginia website where these images can be seen is 1838 (see http://www.iath.virginia.edu/utc/abolitn/gallsff.html). 8. Phrenological Society of Edinburgh, Catechism of Phrenology, 13. 9. See Gall (On the Functions of the Brain, Vols 3–5), Combe (A System of Phrenology) and Fowler and Fowler (Phrenology Proved). 10. See, e.g., Henry James Pede's 'Pedeology', a satirical piece comparing 'bumpology' to 'Pedeology'. The improbably named Henry James Pede declaims: Pedeology asserts, and not only asserts, but incontestably proves by a series of well-established facts, by analogy, by induction, by anatomical demonstrations, that there is an intimate connection between the brain of man and his feet … and hence, that in the organs of the feet are clearly displayed the intellectual powers and capabilities, and the prevailing propensities of man. For the phrenologists' view of the correlation between the size and power of an organ, see Phrenological Society of Edinburgh (Catechism of Phrenology, 17). 11. Combe, Essays on Phrenology, 272. 12. Fowler, Self Culture (1853), 93–94. 13. Combe, Essays on Phrenology, 361. 14. Combe, Essays on Phrenology, 382. 15. Combe, Essays on Phrenology, 380. 16. Fowler rejected any hint of the fatalistic potential of phrenological theory – a propensity that had dogged the field from the outset and was most fully visible in Gall's pronouncements. 17. Fowler, Self Culture (1851), v. 18. Fowler, Practical Phrenology, 428. 19. Fowler, Practical Phrenology, 22. 20. Fowler, Practical Phrenology, 388 21. In this regard, the benefits of phrenology may be seen as a parallel case to the cult of sincerity. 22. Fowler, Practical Phrenology, 425. 23. Combe, Essays on Phrenology, 210. 24. As John Van Wyhe has pointed out, it was Spurzheim who first published the image of a marked head to illustrate the placement of the organs. Combe and Fowler's phrenological heads were more regular in shape, more idealised (Van Wyhe, Phrenology, 34–35). 25. Lavater, Essays on Physiognomy (1775–1778; translated 1789); Carolus Linnaeus, Systema Naturae (from 1735); Georges Cuvier, Research on the Fossil Bones of Quadrupeds, first published in France in 1812; and Johann Friedrich Blumenbach's On the Natural Varieties of Mankind (1775, 1795; translated 1865) have been the basis of all subsequent racial classifications. Blumenbach's analysis of an extensive skull collection, published as Collectio Craniorum Diversarum Gentium (1790–1828), established craniometric study. For more on Enlightenment thinking on natural history, see Sloan ('The Gaze of Natural History', 112–151). 26. James Montgomery's treatise with Corden Thompson's rejoinder are reprinted in Cooter (Phrenology in Europe and America, Vol. 4). 27. Thompson, 'Strictures on Mr. Montgomery's Essay on the Phrenology of the Hindoos and Negroes', in Montgomery, 55. 28. Frederick Douglass, quoted in Anon. ('The Negro is a Man'). 29. Combe, Constitution of Man, 101–102. 30. Tiedemann, 'On the Brain of the Negro', 525. 31. Combe, 'Remarks', 14. 32. Fowler and Fowler, Phrenology Proved, 31. 33. Fowler and Fowler, Phrenology Proved, 31. 34. Anon, 'Slavery', 188. 35. Anon, 'Dr Smith'. This review of Smith's lecture was reprinted from an editorial column in The Commercial Advertiser. The Philanthropist (17 October 1837), which reprinted the article, also took very favourable notice of McCune's lecture. 36. Anon, 'Statistics of Phrenology in the United States', 185. 37. His Phrenology in Connexion with the Study of Physiognomy was first published in London in 1826 and in Boston in 1833. 'Scarcely had the light of that countenance which beamed with benevolence toward all mankind, shone for a moment upon his first American audience, when Spurzheim was no more,' complained the American Journal of the Medical Sciences in its review of the book (see also Walsh, 'American Tour of Dr Spurzheim', 187–206). Combe took note of McCune's opposition to phrenology as noted by the Colored American. Ironically, he attributed this to his having been trained within an atmosphere hostile to phrenology in Edinburgh (see Combe, Notes, Vol. 2, 190). 38. In particular, see Combe's Essays on Phrenology (1819) and the popular and influential The Constitution of Man, first published in 1828. 39. See Anon ('Statistics of Phrenology in the United States', 185). More than 20,000 copies of George Combe's The Constitution of Man had been sold in the United States by January 1841 and Harpers had sold over 30,000 copies of Andrew Combe's Principles of Physiology, as Applied to Health and Education. 40. Anon, 'Statistics of Phrenology in the United States', 185. 41. Fowler and Fowler, Phrenology Proved, iii. 42. Fowler and Fowler, Phrenology Proved, iii–iv. 43. Anon, 'Phrenology', 191. 44. See, e.g., Cambell ('Phrenology and Grahamism'), Anon ('Mr Combe – Grahamism'), S. ('George Combe') and Graham ('George Combe and Phrenology'). 45. Anon, 'Miscellany' (1846). 46. Anon, 'Henry E. Lewis'. 47. Anon, 'Lectures'. 48. Anon, 'For the Recorder: Dr Brown's Lecture'. 49. Anon, 'Mr George Combe's Lectures'. 50. R., 'Reformatory'. 51. Combe is quoted as saying, in part: If there is a living being in the United States who does not lament and shudder at this scourge of humanity, he is dead, not only to the voice of conscience and of patriotism, but to the sense of shame and the honor of his country. The grand moral lesson which the United States is reading to the world is neutralized, nay, converted into a bitter mockery of reason, by slavery; and in every part of Europe where I have travelled, is this deplorable truth known and lamented by the good, but hailed with pleasure and pointed to with triumph by the oppressor and his tool. ('George Combe on Slavery') 52. Combe, Essays on Phrenology, 305. 53. Significantly, when the American Phrenological Journal put its agenda before the public, it contrasted its own democratic, popular agenda with the more elitist approach of the Edinburgh Phrenological Journal, pointing out that 'knowledge here is every man's birth-right: and a science whose tendencies are to elevate its votaries to the greatest heights … is alike the property of all our citizens who have the inclination and the ability to acquire it' (see Anon, 'Introductory Statement'). 54. Short untitled piece originally published in the Oasis (Nashua, NH) and reprinted in the American Phrenological Journal 9, no. 7 (1 July 1847): 221. 55. Anon, 'An African'. 56. Camper, Works, 42. 57. Fowler, Practical Phrenology, 43. Additional informationNotes on contributorsCynthia S. Hamilton Cynthia S. Hamilton is currently an Associate Fellow of the Rothermere American Institute, University of Oxford. She teaches American Literature and Culture at the Manchester Metropolitan University, Cheshire. Her current research focuses on the discourses that gave the reform literature of the antebellum period its emotional potency.