2. The evolution of species had long been debated by scientists
Charles Darwin has long been regarded as the first to propose the idea of evolution. He was not. The idea of evolution of species was proposed in Greece before the time of Socrates. Scientists and philosophers had long classified species in a hierarchical manner over a century before Darwin’s work. Yet all had, to that time, classified species as wholly independent of each other. The controversy over Darwin was based on his theory of natural selection determining the survival and transmutation of species. Natural selection, to his opponents, removed the divine act of the Creator.
In the United States, Darwin’s work was published by Asa Gray, a botanist (there was no international copyright protection at the time, and Gray received a 5% royalty for Darwin’s work, with the latter’s approval). Darwin’s work appeared in the antebellum United States torn over the issue of slavery and racial equality, and was received in that light. Northern colleges and universities widely accepted his theories of natural selection, those of the South rejected them largely on religious views, peppered, as it were, with the implications of the work indicating all races descended from a single common source.