Rising. His work has appeared in the new york times, the wall street journal and other publications. Professor fuller is the winner. [inaudible] the book that changed america, how darwin siri of evolution explores how they gain new perspective on the lead up to the civil war. They go on to call mr. Fuller an excellent writer with an eye for irony. The boston globe called the book of vivid snapshot of American Intellectual life on the verge of the civil war. Please join me in welcoming randall fuller. [applause] thank you very much for that nice introduction. Thanks for coming out on what feels like a chilly night. I realize its not that chilly for boston. Im very glad to have been invited by the harvard bookstore. Ive spent many hours browsing in this bookstore while ive done Research Trips across the street. One of those Research Trips occurred about three years ago when i found myself in the archive at harvard with this wrapped up Cardboard Box placed in front of me. The archivist said it was a book that hadnt been examined for a generation or maybe two generations. If anyone in the audience is a literary historian, you know the thrill they get when they give you the white gloves to put on your hands. Its precious and not supposed to be handled to roughly. I had my white gloves on, i had the box put in front of me, they are always wrapped a laboratory in string like a christmas present, and i open the box up and what i saw was one of the first, if not the very first copy of Charles Darwin revolutionary, on the origin of species, to arrive in this country. Im not a scientist, im not a biologist. I came up this book in a kind of roundabout way, as a literary historian, as someone who is interested in many of the riders from new england in the 19th century that we know so well. Emerson, emily dickinson, a little further south, walt whitman, herman melville, but i was working on a project about Henry David Thoreau. I just had encountered a single line in a biography that said, on january 1, 1860, the row had, for the first time, encountered a copy of darwins on the origin of species. It is widely assumed by me, and by Many American studies folks that darwins book didnt have a Significant Impact until after the civil war. That book was published late 1859 and it arrives here and makes it here in 1860. In about 15 months or so the civil war the reps and the nation is really preoccupied with that. Only after that time does this amazing, intellectual revolution affected by darwin make itself felt. I shouldnt have been surprised because in many ways like his mentor, emerson, he was always ahead ahead of ideas. What i felt was a curiosity on my part to find how he got a hold of that. Here is the story. Charles darwin publishes on the origin of species in 1859, the book sells out on the day that its published. It has a print run of 1500 in england and a new print run is produced in england. Of the First Addition he sent several copies to the United States. The one that i was interested in was a copy he sent to azor gray. He was the first botanist at Harvard College. He was not entirely selftaught. He had a Little College education but was largely a field scientist who was a master categorize or of north american botany. Gray was the preeminent botnet in the u. S. In the 1850s and had developed a friendship with darwin. Many of you may know Charles Darwin was a largely reclusive person who tended not to leave his home in the countryside of england very often, but who had of voluminous and wide spread correspondence, primarily with other scientists. Over the case of the 1850s darwin had asked periodically, through the mail, his colleague here azor gray, if he could give him more details about the way there were some plants in north america that were also in japan, but no other place. He asked questions like that pretty didnt know why he was asking those questions but azor gray was somewhat flattered that he could answer those questions and so he did. Over a period of a couple years, gray and darwin became longdistance friends. When his book is published, darwin sends a copy, a complementary copy to his friend azor gray and he immediately sees this book. People will ask me is this the actual book and the sad answer is, no, its not. This is exactly what the original looks like. This is a first edition, on the origin of species, but this one is from the Natural History museum in new york because it was easier to photograph for a Publishing House in new york. This is basically what it looks like. It was a stout green book printed by john murray, the english publisher who is famous in my world for also publishing Herman Melvilles moby dick, and darwin sent it to azor gray in late 1859. It crosses the atlantic and arrives here, we dont know the exact date, but around decembe december 10 or december 15, someplace in that time period. He devours the book. He marks it up with pencil, this is why i came here to look at this thing, he put asterix and exclamation points, he is underlying passages, occasionally he will write yes, i agree, sometimes he will write no i disagree, and then those tend to be longer explanations, as though he is taking notes so he can provide feedback for darwin. He reads the book quickly, and filled it with notes, the back of the book has just a long list of minor corrections that he sends to darwin as soon as he finishes the book, and he begins in cambridge to tell everybody he encounters about it. He tells the great pragmatist philosopher and an anonymous two lives here. He tells everyone he knows. He tells about the slot. At christmas time, his relative, his wifes relatives from new york visits, and he tells that relative about that book. That relative was Charles Maureen grace and we tend not to remember him. He was something of a wellknown figure in antebellum america, but if you know anything about him now, you know of this Child WelfareReform Movement that he started, and specifically about something called the orphan trains. He was planning to become a minister until he moved to new york, he saw incredible poverty, especially among a new immigrant population of german and irish folks living in Lower Manhattan, and what often happened was their children were orphaned or abandoned, and the streets in Lower Manhattan were filled with irish and german immigrant orphans. He began a series of reforms, he created lodging houses for these children, he created special lodging houses for newspaper sellers, the newspaper boys who became featured in a newspaper and they were largely homeless and needed a place to stay. He created a number of schools, primarily vocational schools for these children, but the big thing he did was come up with the idea that if orphaned in the greedy and unhealthy environments of Lower Manhattan could be put on trains and moved to the west, the west was pennsylvanian that was ohio, if they could be placed on trains and relocated, he felt they could be, americanized and embrace the idea this is the foster care. He was eagerly read darwins book as well. Like his wifes cousin, he was powerfully interested in new science. He read the book over christmas break and as it so happened, he was invited to massachusetts to deliver a lecture on the orphans train on new years day 1860. Were getting close to the row. One of the fun things about writing the book was simply trying to determine what the weather was like that day. There was knee high depth of snow, those of you can imagine the frost on the windows, and brace gave his talk at the town hall on the orphan trains and then was led back to a house in the center of town owned by Franklin Sanborn, an abolitionist he invited two people for dinner, the philosopher and father of louisa may, i like to call him the improvident, those of you who know, they may know the anecdote that he once went on a sixmonth lecture tour and once came back with 5 so he was not a money guy. He was a philosopher. He was an idealist. Finally, the last person at that dinner table was Henry David Thoreau. As i say in my book, of all of those people who had a chance of looking at this one particular book, the person who was most influenced by it was Henry David Thoreau. He was in many ways, no longer the hermit, im characterizing him but he was no longer the inhabitant of walden pond he was already beginning a second act in his life and that second life was a kind of scientist. A field scientists. He would leave his mothers house in mainstreet and would walk through the meadows in the fields in the forests of that area, taking notes, taking notes on every bit of natural phenomenon that he saw, whether it was when the ice melted from walden pond, the sweet maple leaves unfurled in the spring, when migrating birds came through, he takes notes on everything. He had this wonderful hat that he wore at this time, it wasnt quite a top hat, he had a larger crown than usual, and he had built for himself a platform inside the crown of that hat in which he would place botanical samples and he would take those home and press them between this large collection of flute music that belonged to his father and was heavy and hes making his own herbarium. Hes pressing all of these specimens that he can store in the addict of his mothers house on main street. He actually, one day he puts, i wish i could remember the name of the kind of plant, but he puts a collection of seedpods in the crown of his hat on that little platform, and they are kind of seedpods that explodes with seeds that are at a particular time year end apparently hes walking home with these and they start going off and he says they sound like gunfire above my head. He is doing this very empirical finegrained Natural History from the early 1850s on, and when he gets a hold of darwins book, and he doesnt get this one, he talks about it with the others at dinner on new years day, and what he does is he pesters the library to get a copy as soon as possible and the librarian does by late january, and he reads the book. It really transform a lot of what he is doing as a writer, for example, he takes these enormous newspaper size sheets of paper and he begins to create what look like very early forms of a spreadsheet, and he traces every single plant and animal that he has observed over the course of eight years, so at the top there may be the year 1852, january through december, and then this long row of plants and animals, hes primarily interested in botany. When they lost their leaves, when he saw a seed planted, all of these things he records. These are at the new york public library, the enormous spreadsheets of data. He also writes an essay called the succession of forest trees which is a now largely forgotten essay but was in fact the most published essay that he wrote during his time. It was picked up in newspapers and spread all over the nation. He tries to answer this very simple question that darwin raises on the origin of species, and that question is, darwin says everybody has heard that in america, when you cut down a pine forest, and oak forest sprouts up where it was before, and vice versa. If you cut down in oak forest, a pine for sprouts up. There were a number of theories about why this might be, including one that emerson and louis argosy, the comparative analysis here at harvard believed which was that it was spontaneous. It was an example of spontaneous creation that something either chemical or divine, something happened where a different species sprouted up. He made a very well reasoned well observed in what appears as a fairly obvious observation and thats what i noticed is squirrels will take air corns and plant them under a pine tree because pine trees will shelter them during the winter time and he observes how forests come into being after an old forest is cut down. I want to shift gears for just a second and say that he was by no means typical in his reaction of species. There were three more common reactions in the year before the civil war. I will go through those quickly and see what questions you may have. The first of these is the religious response. The one that is in some ways still with us, somebody keeps pointing out to me on a twitter feed that a low number of people believe humans have evolved from animal ancestors. That comes from the initial religious response to darwin. That response in the first 18 months was this the for us. There are riders who almost immediately recognized that darwins idea of natural selection, because it focuses on entirely physical or material processes, poses a challenge or threatens traditional religious belief in a divine creation and specifically, the one that worried people the most in 1860 is the divine creation of people. God created man in his image so the bible says. Darwin seems to come along and throw that into some doubt. A number of theological, periodicals from the other. Says what Charles Darwin has done is removed design or removed the creator from the creation. There is this religious reaction that i think we can anticipate to some extent. The reaction i think are more interesting, and the ones that i really focus on in my book are twofold, but both of them are related to the historical moment in which the book arrived here. I will go back for a second to john brown. John brown, as you probably know had an idea that he would, with a small band of people, take over and armory in virginia at harvards ferry, release those weapons and distribute them to the slave population and foment a slave rebellion that would effectively put an end to slavery. Brown believed he was called by god to do that, and he put that plan into action, but it failed abysmally. He was almost immediately captured, wounded, imprisoned and over the course of a month there was a trial in which he testifies on his own behalf, and on december 2, 1859, he is executed by hanging in virginia. That execution galvanize the country. The country was already polarized over the issue of slavery but it ratcheted up even more. It really led to intense divisions over the issue of slavery, and after darwins book arrives within a matter of weeks, there are periodicals and newspapers in the north and in the south who are using darwins idea of a nature that is constantly at war and constantly competing with itself to describe the nation. For example, a periodical in new orleans says something along the lines of we southerners are different people from those northerners. We have different beliefs and different values, completely different culture, only one of those cultures is going to survive, and the new york times, at exactly, almost this moment in february of 1860 is saying exactly the same thing. We are two peoples, we cannot live together any longer, either slavery is going to spread through the south and to the west or its going to be abolished, but the two can no longer live sidebyside. The language that gets used over and over again is we are at war, only the fittest will be able to continue, so you can see whats happening here. A darwinian sense of survival is being applied to a social context. Even more intensely, darwin siri in the first year that it arrived here, and especially in this area, in new england, in cambridge which were sort of like the twin whitehot centers of abolitionism, darwin siri is seen to comment upon racial ideology and slavery. Let me tell you what i mean and then ill open it up for questions. Louis argosy, who i mentioned earlier, the comparative anatomist at Harvard College had a theory. He didnt originate this theory but he was its most vocal proponent throughout the 1840s and 1850s of something called special creationism. Special creationism was an argument that god, when he created the world, had created each species of plant and animal in a particular zone that it was meant to thrive in. He had placed them there because that was the best place for them and they were never going to change. These species were immutable and they would not alter over eons of time. For example, a whale in the north atlantic was put there by god because that whale was best, was a creature adapted to that climate, just as the toucan in south america was. What other american, so called acknowledges, what they did was say that the same thing applied to human races so that whites had been initially planted by god near the Caucasus Mountains in eastern europe, and this is where this misnomer term caucasian, which we still use at times comes from. They had been placed there and had spread in his own that was largely european, over time just as native americans had been placed on the north american continent, and just as black people had been created and placed in africa. Now, the American School of ethnology and louis argosys saw this differentiation in race as also being hierarchical. Their different theories about this, and one of them was, for example, people of darker skin had been gods first draft, and that, it always was based on the idea that white people were superior, were managerial, were the cultural elite that was meant by god to be superior to these other races. That was the dominant scientific notion of race in this country in the 1850s. There were certainly quarrels about it, there was disagreement about it, but that was the most prominent and pronounced version of race by scientists in this country in the 1850s, and what darwin did is say my theory is that all species, all races, all plants, all animals and common and shared ancestors. So, in the first year of darwins book being in this country, and thats really all i focus on, i have a very narrow window from 1859 when the book arrives until about the start of the civil war, in the first year, the most vehement and enthusiastic adopters of darwins book were the abolitionists. They felt as though finally, a scientific theory had come along that could counter the predominant American School of ethnology, which to no surprise the slaveholding south tended to like to have in its pocket, and could finally make a case that black people and white people were not separately created, but were in fact brothers and sisters who shared a common ancestor. This is why, on january 1, 1860, Franklin Sanborn and Henry David Thoreau were so excited about this book initially. Over the course of time, it would take on all kinds of different inflections, but that is the way it was red in 1860, and that book that he began my talk with, the one at the gray her barry and at harvard, named after azor gray because he donated his vast botanical collection to it was the one that those five intellectuals all discussed on the first day of 1860. Thank you very much. [applause] i have three questions. [inaudible] first of all, its not extent. One of the things i had done at the harvard library, they basically recreated the 19th century collection that they h had, you can actually go and see the books that were there. Some of which he did check out and you can even find out what books darwins stood between. Ive done that. It didnt survive. Im actually not surprised, not because he was rough on books, but because i think a lot of people checked it out after him. I just dont think it survived. He doesnt really make, he tends to bracket off that religious debate from his own work which is really bad of a field scientist who is trying to add new knowledge to bolster or contribute to what darwin has done. We can imagine, from his discussion about the divinity, his interest in god as a transcendentalist that he probably didnt have any kind of moment where suddenly ive seen the light and i renounce belief in the spirit and will only focus on the material and physical world. It seems much less symmetrical than that. He quarrels with himself throughout 1860 about science has this wonderful way of seeing the Natural World around us. Then he also says, but science only goes so far. There are things about the Natural World that i want to know, and he gives an example, in 1860 science will tell you what a dog ways, what color it is, all kinds of behavioral stuff, but it cant really tell you what the dog is thinking about you, and what the special feeling is that a person has with the dog. I would say hes sort of a perennial agnostic. And the question of whether its. Purely nature working or some kind of divine principles like the german idealist, was he concerned about that at all . This is why the essay, the succession of forest trees is so interesting. At times, in that essays, he contributes a designed to nature and hell say, theres a Patent Office in nature that is minting new plants and animals all the time. He gives a kind of purpose to nature. He says the managers are doing excellent work or Something Like that, but he doesnt really describe, he doesnt really make the leap of saying god is a manager, or that theres a real intention behind that minting of new species. Also though, in that essay, in the very same essay in the space of ten pages or so, he moves into what i think is an appreciation of the miraculous nature of the Material World and he does this by focusing on the seed. He says i have faith in the seed. He uses religious language in discussing the way plants grow up from these tiny little packets, but its a purely materialistic version or vision. So i think when a radical idea, and darwins not the only one who is radical, materialism is becoming a stronger strain in american thought at this time. I think when people live in a world where there are two strains, one residual and one emergent, they go back and forth, or they inhabit both of them at the same time. Finally, as regard to natural selection, in his notes which are housed at the new york public library, he took about six pages of notes on the origin of species. He copies a number of passages about natural selection, but the thing that he seems to be especially interested in is darwins discussion of geographical distribution of plants. How plants spread from one place to the other, and that seems to be what drives his research in 1860. Do you have any idea when darwin siri became incorporated either formally or informally in medical research. Yes, i do, its actually, surprisingly quick. Louis agassizs is the biggest critic of darwinian theory, but within a matter of a couple of years his position is largely seen as oldschool or obsolete. By the late 1860s, in the Science Curriculum at the institution of higher learning, his theory is taught as is lamarck siri but thats a whole other can of worms. He is adopted by american scientists very quickly. In part because american scientists want to be a part of this global scientific network, they want to participate in the new ideas. Whats the publishing history of darwins book in the United States. Thats a great question. Copyright does not obtain in the United States at this time. In general, Book Publishers in america could make more money by stealing novels and other books by english riders and simply pirating them and dispersing them. There was an interesting, i have a friend whos a lawyer doing work on the history of intellectual Property Rights and there was a interesting tradition despite the stealing, sometimes offering money to the author that is an american publisher saying what if we gave you 50. You know were stealing it from you, but its a token of good faith. Azor gray, when he got the copy, he tried to work out the best deal he possibly could for darwin. He went and negotiated here in boston, but before negotiations could get very far, appleton in new york published it. We tend to think with the internet that information gets dispersed very quickly, it did their at this time as well. His book arrived in middecemb middecember. By january 10, less than a month, appleton had published its own addition of darwins book, and in this country, in 1860, it went through three editions. It wasnt a huge bestseller like uncle toms cabin, but it sold Something Like five or 6000 copies in the first year it was here which represented a successful book. It also tells us that the book had a fair amount of influence amongst americas readers. That was unauthorized. Yes it was on authorize. This edition really never came over here except the few copies that darwin sent. He also sent one to louis agassizs because he knew louis would disagree with them or Charles Eliot norton who resided in cambridge, he brought a copy over from his trip in 1859 as well, but otherwise, the american copy predominated here. Can you tell us anything about the related question, the popular list of the theories covered in newspapers. Again, the awareness is pretty widespread and it happens pretty quickly. So by february, a book that really only five people in the United States know anything about on the last day of 1859, by february, not only have all of the major newspapers on the eastern seaboard commented on it, but places like new orleans, cincinnati ohio, places scattered all over are reprinting those reviews and are also commenting upon those reviews. The primary initial response has to do with this question of race and the origins of the races. So, to give you a quick fun example, tt barnum, that wonderful cultural and bizarre jo who always had his finger in Popular Culture wins, he was instantly aware of this book, and by late january had a new and bestselling exhibit of something called the what is it. The what is it was a young africanamerican boy dressed in some kind of for outfit and barnum read hold the story that his men in africa, on the west coast of africa had seen this creature and had captured it and brought it back to the u. S. , and he was exhibiting it. It was an amazingly successful exhibition. He called it the missing link. Hes playing right into darwinian notions, darwin doesnt talk about this at all in this book, but people immediately read into the work, the sort of racial derivations going back to primates. So this missing link was meant to suggest, look, this proves darwins theory. And George Templeton strong, very intelligent and insightful lawyer in new york at this time, went to see this exhibit, comes back in his journal and writes Something Like hes a damn good piece of evidence for darwin siri. So again, thats within two months. Its a fairly widespread, theres a disk course about all of this that is at least partially inspired by darwin. So building on that a little bit, my sense is that darwin siri did give some theory, fuel to racist ideas as well. You can elaborate on what youre saying but how did he defeat agassiz. You can talk about that. So yes, youre right. Eventually, especially after the civil war, darwinian theory can be used to justify all kinds of racist ideas. So, an obvious one is, its obvious that white people are the most fit to survive. This language is used with what will soon be the negative american wars out west. Its a part of darwin siri that he predicts whites will be able to exterminate this weaker race and its also the recently freed slaves after the civil war. The use of darwin for racist ideology before the war, i couldnt find it. I dont see it. It seems like its initially grasped by an intellectual, an abolitionist cohort from this area first, in part because they use it as a kind of justification for abolition. The second part of your question. How would you summarize how darwin defeated him in town here. Its really a battle of good ideas versus a kind of competition of ideas. His ideas had tended to be embraced as expressing that there was a design behind this species creation, but a geologist, botanist and zoologist had been accumulating evidence and theyre all kinds of problems and questions that theory couldnt answer. What is so wonderful about this theory is that answers all of these problems that weve had as scientist for the last many years. His ideas quickly seemed to be obsolete. Massivsuggest agassiz was a very successful fundraiser in the south and his ideas often times were very linked to fundraising campaigns. Yes, i think thats exactly right. He was a genius, an institutional genius in a lot of ways, and i also dont want to minimize, but what he was busy doing was less fighting darwin then raising funds for them as museum of zoology. It was an enormous undertaking, and was a stateoftheart facility at the time. I dont know how much you thought about the difference between how darwin is received in england versus here, just seems like the context here is so specific to civil war. Im just curious what you noticed. Thats in part because ive written and studied so much about the american civil war. I think i was attuned to that. There were certainly debates and famous arguments, theres a great moment in july, in england where the reverend make some