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ALFRED H. STONE COLLECTION
VOLUME: 75



3. J. H. Van Evrie and S. A. Cartwright, The Dred Scott Decision. Opinion of
Chief Justice Taney, with an Introduction by Dr. J. H. Van Evrie. Also, an
Appendix, Containing an Essay on the Natural History of the Prognathous Race of
Mankind, Originally Written for the New York Day-Book by Dr. S. A. Cartwright,
of New Orleans (New York: Van Evrie, Horton & Co., 1860). (ix, 48 p.)




Reprint of Chief Justice Taney’s decision in the Dred Scott case with an
introduction by an imminent anti-abolitionist physician and publisher. The essay
by Dr. Cartwright offers a polygenetic explanation of racial differences. “It is
not intended by the use of the term Prognathous to call in question the black
man’s humanity or the unity of the human races as a genus,” Dr. Cartwright
explains, “but to prove that the species of the genus homo are not a unity, but
a plurality, each essentially different from the others—one of the being so
unlike the other two—the oval-headed Caucasian and the pyramidal-headed
Mongolian—as to be actually Prognathous, like the brute creation; not that the
negro is a brute, or half man and half brute, but a genuine human being,
anatomically constructed, about the head and face, more like the monkey tribes
and the lower order of animals than any other species of the genus man.” Dr.
Cartwright goes on to explain that the term prognathous is “derived from pro,
before, and gnathos, the jaws, indicating that the muzzle or mouth is anterior
to the brain” (terms italicized in original). The back cover of the pamphlet
contains advertisements for publications critical of abolitionism, such as
“Negroes & Negro ‘Slavery:’ The First an Inferior Race—The Latter Its Normal
Condition,” and “Negro Slavery Not Unjust.” An advertisement for the New York
Day-Book” on the back explains that this weekly publication “was started to
combat the modern heresies of Abolitionism.”