But in neither of these arenas did anyone question the assumption of a racial hierarchy. Racial differences are innate. There must have been separate and unequal creations. The American school of ethnology affirmed on the basis of cranial measurements and other archaeological evidence that blacks were permanently inferior to whites. This theory allowed for slavery, Indian extermination, and imperial expansion.
Racial differences are the product of environment.
This theory relies upon the assumption that a race can literally be transformed through the power of the environment. Blacks benefited from a protective social status or deserved animal-like treatment because of their inferiority to whites or their subhuman status. Romantics who viewed Blacks as inherently good rejected slavery because it took unfair advantage of the Blacks innocence and good nature. Stowe fits into this category. To vilify slavery and by so doing help the cause of abolition.