Note 148 — Chapter XIV · SOCIETY IN THE OLD DOMINION.

At the famous meeting in the Tabernacle at New York, in May, 1850, when Isaiah Rynders and his ruffians made a futile attempt to silence Garrison, one of the speakers maintained “that the blacks were not men, but belonged to the monkey tribe.” William Lloyd Garrison: the Story of his Life, told by his Children, iii. 294. Defenders of slavery at that time got much comfort from Agassiz’s opinion that the different races of men had distinct origins. It was perhaps even more effective than the favourite “cursed be Canaan” argument.