Three Approaches to "Racial" Admixture in the Early American Era (1776-1826)

Three opinions regarding multiethnic people reigned in the early American Era of the United States (ca. 1776-1826). First, some Anglos accepted the existence of multiethnic people, but their intentions were not always honorable. While Patrick Henry thought it proper to provide “free public education for interracial children” that were part Native American and part Anglo,[1] Thomas Jefferson saw the practice of intermingling as a manner to expand the United States’ power and “improve” its original inhabitants. He was convinced that “the improvement of the blacks on body and mind, in the first instance of their mixture with the whites, has been observed by everyone, and proves their inferiority is not the effect merely of condition of life.”[2] As president, Jefferson encouraged various Native American tribes to interbreed with Anglos[3] so that their absorption into society would remove a major obstacle to the Anglo settlement of the entire continent.[4]

            Second, some people abhorred any admixture between various ethnic groups and thought that science provided an answer as to why intermingling was unwise and dangerous. In 1795, prominent German biologist Johann Friedrich Blumenbach (1752-1840) created a taxonomy of the human race that made use of color and physical characteristics to distinguish different populations.[5] Blumenbach popularized the term Caucasian, and unsurprisingly considered people who looked like him, and originated from the same part of Europe, as superior to other representatives of the human race.[6]

This arbitrary classification of human beings provided opponents of intermingling a so-called scientific reason for why this practice was problematic. Blumenbach’s racial taxonomy also provided a justification as to why the majority of Americans from European descent saw individuals with non-Anglo ancestry as inferior to “pure” Anglos in both the mental and physical realms. In the early 1800s, for example, a traveler who made his way to Lake Superior took the time to note that a mixed-race female with Native American heritage that he happened to observe “was passably pretty,”[7] apparently in spite of her non-Anglo ancestry.

            Third, a measurable percentage of the population admitted that some intermingling between various people groups occurred, but that it was nowhere as prominent as the evidence might suggest. In 1798, William Short, a man whom Thomas Jefferson referred to as his “adoptive son,”[8] attempted to explain away the large number of light-skinned African Americans who labored on plantations by suggesting that many of them had adapted to colder climates. This theory was popular because many refused to admit that lighter skinned African Americans were the offspring of Anglo slaveholders and African slaves. Short suggested to Jefferson,

As to the evils to be apprehended from the mixture of the two colors (& I know that the most enlightened & virtuous minds do apprehend such) the subject is certainly worthy of serious attention—Facts are certainly wanting to guide us—It is impossible yet to know, notwithstanding the long systems drawn from short experiments, what influence the climate alone with produce on the black color—If I do not mistake the blacks in our country several generations removed from their imported ancestors are sensibly less dark than the Africans themselves—some part of this may be imputed perhaps to a mixture of the whites in their production, but a part also to the climate.[9]

Jefferson likely raised an eyebrow when he read these musings since he knew better. The third president of the United States was well aware how often slaveholders sired offspring with their slaves since he himself was the father of several multiethnic children through Sally Hemings, a biracial slave who was the daughter of Jefferson’s father-in-law, John Wayles.[10]

            Nevertheless, the insistence that amalgamation was less common that believed persisted in American culture. Decades later in The Descent of Man (1871), Charles Darwin wrote, “There is, also, a considerable body of evidence shewing that in the Southern States the house-slaves of the third generation present a markedly different appearance from the field-slaves.”[11] While Darwin considered this disparity the result of diverging lifestyles, in reality plantation owners gave their offspring the coveted position of “house Negroes” so that they would not have to perform backbreaking tasks in the fields.[12] The majority of the proponents of this view knew that it was nothing more than a smokescreen that obscured the truth because slaveholders’ treatment of their female slaves was one of the worst kept secrets in the United States. Nevertheless, Anglo society largely preferred to ignore the truth of what was occurring on a daily basis wherever Anglos and African Americans lived in close proximity.

The topic of intermixture, along with the topic of “race,” are twin issues with which the United States has struggled for most of its history. In many ways, the views of the Early American Era continue to influence current ways of thinking. For example, the majority of government documents that require people to cite their “race,” is tied to the centuries-old attempts to maintain the “purity” of Anglo-Saxon peoples. Understanding the past, therefore, is one important key to understanding why we think the way we do regarding race, and how we might improve our thinking in this arena.

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[1] Gary B. Nash, “The Hidden History of Mestizo America,” Journal of American History 82.3 (December 1995): 943.

[2] Thomas Jefferson, Writings: Autobiography, Notes on the State of Virginia, Public and Private Papers, Addresses, Letters, vol. 17 in The Library of America Series (New York: Library of America, 1984), 141.

[3] Ibid., 439.

[4] Bethany Ruth Berger, “After Pocahontas: Indian Women and the Law, 1830-1934,” in

Mixed Race America and the Law: A Reader, ed. Kevin R. Johnson (New

York: New York University Press, 2003), 73. 

[5] Deenesh Sohoni, “Unsuitable Suitors: Anti-Miscegenation Laws, Naturalization Laws, and the Construction of Asian Identities,” Law & Society Review 41.3 (September 2007): 602.

[6] Johann Friedrich Blumenbach, The Anthropological Treatises of Johann Friedrich Blumenback (London: Longman, Green, Longman, Roberts, & Green, 1865), 265, 303-4.

[7] H. M. Brackenridge and Gabriel Franchère, Early Western Travels, 1748-1846, vol. 6, Brackenridge’s Journal Up the Missouri, 1811, Franchère’s Voyage to Northwest Coast, 1811-1814, ed. Reuben Gold Thwaites (Cleveland, OH: Arthur H. Clark Company, 1904), 395.

[8] “William Short,” Monticello, https://www.monticello.org/site/research-and-collections/william-short (accessed October 26, 2017).

[9] “To Thomas Jefferson from William Short, 27 February 1798,” National Archies: Founders Online, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Jefferson/01-30-02-0098 (accessed October 26, 2017).

[10] Peter Nicolaisen, “Thomas Jefferson, Sally Hemings, and the Question of Race: An Ongoing Debate,” Journal of American Studies 37.1 (April 2003): 105-6.

[11] Charles Darwin, Evolutionary Writings, ed. James A. Second (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), 286.

[12] “In the Slavery Years Torture was a Standard Instrument of Racial Control,” Journal of Blacks in Higher Education 64 (Summer 2009): 43; Russell-Cole, Wilson, and Hall, The Color Complex, 18.