Morton's work gave fuel to John Calhoun, the South Carolina Senator who led the fight in the 1840s to annex Texas as a slave state. Nott used Morton's claims to back up his own polygenist beliefs. He railed against abolitionists and claimed race mixing would produce infertile children.
Scientists weren’t the first to divide humanity along racial – and and racist – lines. But for hundreds of years, racial scientists claimed to provide proof for those racist hierarchies – and some still do.
Resources for this episode:
Fatal Invention, by Dorothy Roberts
The History of White People, by Nell Irvin Painter