Another controversy, which, though mainly political in origin, cleft the ranks of the anthropologists, arose from the slavery question. Clarkson had started his agitation for the abolition of the slave trade about 1782, and during the early years of the nineteenth century many unsuccessful attempts were made to bring the system to an end in America. In 1826 over a hundred anti-slavery societies were in existence, mainly in the middle belt of the States, while the Cotton States were equally unanimous and vehement in opposition. Feeling naturally ran high; riots, murders, lynchings, raids, and general lawlessness characterised the agitation on both sides, and added fuel to the flames which finally dissolved the Union in 1860. At home the question was hotly debated, and popular feeling was excited by the speeches of Clarkson and Wilberforce, and, most of all, by the publication of _Uncle Tom’s Cabin_ (1852). Being mainly a question of race, Anthropology was soon implicated, monogenists and polygenists naturally ranked themselves on opposite sides, and the Ethnological Society became a strong partisan of the philanthropists and abolitionists. In the midst of the excitement James Hunt, Honorary Fellow of the Ethnological Society and President of the newly formed Anthropological Society, read (1863) his paper on “The Negro’s Place in Nature.”[47] In this he carefully examined all the evidence on the subject, physical and psychical, and arrived at the conclusion that “the negro is intellectually inferior to the European, and that the analogies are far more numerous between the ape and negro than between the ape and the European”; moreover, that “the negro becomes more humanised when in his natural subordination to the European than under any other circumstances,” “that the negro race can only be humanised and civilised by Europeans,” and “that European civilisation is not suited to the negro’s requirements or character.” An abstract of the paper was read by Dr. Hunt at the meeting of the British Association at Newcastle, 1863, where the presence of an eloquent coloured speaker enlivened the subsequent discussion.[48] A tremendous outcry greeted the publication of this paper, and tightened the tension on the already strained relations between the two societies. Fierce denunciations from Exeter Hall and the “broad-brimmed school of philanthropists” were matched by equally vehement applause from the opposing camp. When Dr. Hunt died, a few years later, the following obituary notice, extracted from a New York paper, appeared in the _Anthropological Review_,[49] under the heading “Death of the Best Man in England”:— Footnote 47: _Mem. Anth._, I., p. i. Footnote 48: _Anth. Rev._, i., p. 386. Footnote 49: January, 1870, p. 97.