Like abolitionists, pro-slavery propagandists used powerful imagery to support
their beliefs. In the first half of the nineteenth century, the "sciences"
of physiognomy, phrenology, and craniologythe analysis of facial features,
shape of the head and skull sizewere employed to demonstrate the intellectual
and moral superiority of the white race. The scholar Petrus Camper, for example,
popularized the theory that the angle of the face was an indication of intelligence
the more vertical the line from the forehead through the nose to the
lips, the greater the intelligence. Such pseudo-science provided a rationale
for a natural racial hierarchy. In other imagery, Africans were directly compared
to lower primates in order to justify their enslavement. Even some abolitionists,
who were united against the institution of slavery, believed in scientific
racist theories of this sort.
All books lent by the Rare Books & Special Collections, Ebling Library,
University of Wisconsin at Madison
The Phrenological Miscellany, or, The Annuals of Phrenology
and Physiognomy from 1865 to 1874
New York, 1882
Sir Charles Bell,
Expression: Its Anatomy and Philosophy.
New York, 1883
Petrus Camper, The Works of the Late Petrus Camper, on the Connexion between
the science of anatomy and the arts of drawing, painting, statuary
London, 1794
Thomas Cooke, A Practical
and Familiar View of the
Science of Physiognomy
London, 1819