Darwin was a convinced and convicted monogenist because his family, the Wedgewoods, were deeply devout Bible believers who supported and financed the movement to abolish slavery. Indeed, Darwin’s grandfather, Josiah Wedgwood, even designed the official seal of the abolitionist movement—an image depicting an African slave on one knee, shackled hand and foot, with eyes and hands pointing to God in heaven, pleading, “Am I not a Man and a Brother?”
From his earliest days, Darwin was zealously driven by a moral fire to demonstrate that all the races of humanity were truly one family and that there was a single origin—a common ancestry—for black and white.
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The true Darwin was neither the atheist’s hero nor the fundamentalists’ parody. When Darwin enlisted his keen scientific mind to aid the monogenist cause, he was going deeply against the scientific tide of his day, inspired by a vision of faith. Because Darwin’s case for human unity flew in the face of the world’s scientific authorities, he waited to publish until he could make a scientifically convincing case. Evolution through common ancestry—as we call Darwin’s understanding today—was Darwin’s unique scientific way of undermining slavery and proving the Bible right.
