Specie and species: Race and the money question in nineteenth-century America

摘要: IN New York by Gas-light, AN URBAN EXPOSE' OF 1850, George Foster describes two "magnificently attired" prostitutes beckoning to a country rube. "But for their large feet and vulgar hands," he tells us, "they would be taken queens or princesses." Close scrutiny reveals the essential difference that market goods obscure.' Writing at same time, Edgar Allan Poe offered another version of urban expose in his short story "The Man Crowd." Poe's narrator sits cafe watching "the tumultuous sea human heads" roll by. At first, observations take "an abstract generalizing turn." Soon, however, "I descended details, regarded with minute interest innumerable varieties figure, dress, air, gait, visage, expression countenance." He differentiates between men various ranks habits dress styles walking, finally lighting, like Foster, on physical peculiarities. For example, terms gamblers "easily recognizable" "a certain sodden swarthiness complexion, filmy dimness eye, pallor compression lip"; also detects more than ordinary extension thumb direction right angles fingers." Like believes has discerned an categories people public.2 Essentialism-the search fundamental, intrinsic, "essential" being laws nature-characterized much nineteenth-century public discourse. Samuel Morton, helped establish "American School" anthropology patiently sifting birdseed shot into skulls. The results, giving measure cranial capacity, allowed him rank different races intelligence offer scientific proof relationship appearance character ability.3 Following Morton Louis Aggasiz, American anthropologists argued polygeny,