The American School

Apart from the individual achievements of John Winthrop, Benjamin Franklin, Benjamin Rush and Thomas Jefferson, the first real triumph of science in the New World was the formulation of polygenic theories of human origins by what became known as the American School. James Dekay proclaimed that as America had rid itself of ‘our colonial situation, [and] the embarrassments arising from our exposed and peculiar position … Those interested in Natural History were before then too widely scattered over this extensive country to allow of that familiar interchange of opinions which necessarily elicits further inquiries and discoveries’. This had changed by the end of the War of 1812. Major expeditions to map out the continent and ‘enlarge the boundaries of Natural science’ were undertaken. Improvements in communication and the growth of the population created the basis for natural history to become an area of serious inquiry in the United States. Already in 1826 Dekay could speak with nationalistic pride of the accomplishments of American naturalists and the