Darwin's Sacred Cause: Race, Slavery and the Quest for Human Origins

The authors of an acclaimed biography of Charles Darwin here focus their attention on his 'Sacred Cause', a belief in human brotherhood and the abolition of slavery. Using evidence drawn from years of study among manuscripts and family correspondence, they argue that Darwin's theories on evolution were the result of his abhorrence of the views of creationists and apologists for slavery, who believed that man was superior to other species and that blacks and whites had separate origins.