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Darwin Correspondence Project

From C. C. Graham   30 January 1877

Office of | Public Library | and | Festival Halls, | Louisville, Ky.

P. A. Towne, Manager. | Louisville,

January 30th, 1877.

Mr Hon. Charles Darwin, M.A. F.R.S.

As a convert to your doctrine and a defender of the faith against the pulpits of Louisville, I take the liberty of droping you a line, and of sending you my little Book.1 The clergy, in this country, commenced a tirade upon modern scientists, and one of their ablest, said he would bring to shame the whole batch, and after annihilating Prof. John Tyndall, he would expose the heresy of Darwin, Huxly and Spencer; and his positions were so ridiculously unscientific, that I, in the judgement of sound thinkers in Louisville, annihilated him.2 I sent to Prof. Tyndall one of my numbers, and he thought so well of it as to let me know he had received it, and I have his letter fraimed, to be seen in the Kentucky Musium, (Graham-Musium so called, becaus I bestowed it upon the Public Library,) and I am anxious to get a letter from you for the same purpose. I aim to get five letters only, from yourself, Tyndall, Huxly, Spencer and Draper,3 of our own country, which I purpose to have separately framed, and then inclosed in a large spledid frame, for our Musium and cabinet of Natural History, where I hope it may remain for centuries to come, by which time science will have gained the victory over ignorance and superstition.— Your Book has had a large circulation in Kentucky, and if I had any of my numbers of its defence on hand, I would send them to you.4 Should you write, and I hope you may, let it be on one side only, of about the size of the smaller sheet, here inclosed, so that it can be framed.5 I have one of the finest collections in the united states, the product of seventy years search throughout america, north and south, mostly fossils to which we have added the great Troost Cabinet of minerals, (at the cost of twenty five thousand dollars) said to be superior to Humboldts in [Germania].6

Supposing you may say, who are you thus boring me with your long letters, I will say, I am not John the baptist from the wilderness of locusts and wild honey and girdled about with leather, but one from the far wilderness of the far west of coons, opossums, wild beasts and savage forms, who not only girdled but dressed in leather. And now, I will say, my history has been published in full in the Histories of Kentucky, and the last devotes 60 pages to it and three pages to that of Mr. Clay, he being simply a politician and I having lived a long, rough and adventurous life.7

I was born in 1784 amidst the “dark and bloody land8 parted from savages and wild beasts, and being left an orphan without a friend or a dime in the world, it was to root pig or die, and better it was for me than to have heired a fortune and a herald of fame, as it threw me upon my own resources, which gave me health, strength and fortune, having retired on some two hundred thousand dollars. I never went to school in my life, and what book knowledge I have, has been acquired at night, never haveing lost one hour from active outdoor exertion through the day; and so far as I have published my thoughts, it has been from pencil notes set down in my various wanderings through the world, it being an illustrated book of nature ever open before me, and my own mind being present day and night, I thought for myself. I have been a soldier of three wars—first in 1812 against your country—secondly in the war of Mexico for independence from her mother country Spain, and thirdly, Jefferson Daveys, (late President of the southern Confederacy,) and myself, were messmates in the Black-hawk Indian war, of 1832.9 I have been a prisoner twice by Indians, first in Canada, and secondly with the southern Comanchys and Appachys, on the borders of Mexico, and was once tied to be burnt.10 I have spent two winters in Mexico, first during the civil war that dethroned the Emperor Iturbide in 1822,11 and again in 1852—was on one of the first railroad surveys to California—speculated at Chicago Galena and at the falls of St. Antony12—hunted the Moose deer in the Adarhondic mountains, at the head of the great Hudson of New-York.— In short, I have checkered this continent over and over. I am now in my 93rd year and my hand shakes so that I can with difficulty write, but my muscular strength and health is such that I can walk my 20 miles per day, and feel assured that I shall cast my first century behind me. In giving you a farther knowledge of ego, I—the [illeg] first person, I will say that Governor Bramlette of Kentucky, was a son in law of mine, General Adams of New Orleans also, and the Hon. Joseph Blackburn, a leader now in Congress, from Ashland, Mr. Clay’s district, is another13

If Frederic Peal, son of Sir Robert, is living, he can tell you who I am, as he brought a letter to me from Mr. Clay, and was with me, for a time, at Harrodsburg Springs, when on his way to the Mammoth cave.14

Your Father’s writings were very popular in my class, when a student of medicine, and I feel assured that he was the very closest and most unerring observer, best of the animal and vegetable kingdoms that ever lived, and his doctrine of the sensorial powers will some day be granted as a mental axiom15

The reason why writers on the mind have been lost in wandering mazes and found no end, is that they have assumed an non entity, a thing that has no existence—and then nothing to show its powers. Mind, so called, is a result, some effect not a cause. You may see that I have [examined] and catered to popular sentiments, in my little book, as we must do, not to shock the faith of others too suddenly.

If you answer, direct to Doct. C. C. Graham, Public Library, Louisville, Kentucky, and if I am lucky with you, I will address Huxly and Spencer. I inclose you my advice to the wrangling parties for the Presidency, written a few days ago.16

Most sincerely, | C. C. Graham, M. D.

Footnotes

No publication by Graham has been found in the Darwin Archive–CUL or in the Darwin Library–Down. Graham may have sent a copy of his book The true philosophy of mind (Graham 1869); in it, Graham defended empiricism and attacked the clergy, while maintaining a broadly Christian outlook.
The clergyman has not been identified. Graham refers to Thomas Henry Huxley and Herbert Spencer.
The publications in which Graham defended Origin have not been identified.
CD did reply in a now missing letter (letter from C. C. Graham, 28 March 1880 (Calendar no. 12551)).
Graham had a large mineral collection and had excavated mammoth fossils at Big Bone Lick in 1876 (Duvall 2004, pp. 145–7). The mineralogical and fossil collection of Gerard Troost, consisting of over twenty thousand specimens, was sold to the Louisville Free Public Library by Troost’s estate in July 1874 (Goldstein 1984, p. 142). Alexander von Humboldt had collected mineral specimens on his travels in North and South America and in Russia (NDB).
The biography of Henry Clay in A history of Kentucky was short, but he was mentioned several times throughout the book (W. B. Allen 1872, pp. 236–8 and passim). For the biography of Graham, see W. B. Allen 1872, pp. 299–335.
In the last quarter of the eighteenth century, the Ohio River was often called ‘that dark and bloody river’ and the territory of the Ohio River Valley ‘that dark and bloody land’, in allusion to conflicts between settlers and indigenous people of the area (see Eckert 1995).
For more on the War of 1812, see W. B. Turner 2000; on the Mexican War of Independence (1810–21), see McFarlane 2014; on the Black Hawk War (1832), see Trask 2006. Davis was a lieutenant in the First Infantry of the US Army during the Black Hawk War but did not take part in any fighting as he was on sick leave. He did escort Black Hawk (Mà-ka-tai-me-she-kià-kiàk), the leader of the Sauk rebellion, as prisoner to St Louis (Scanlan 1940, pp. 178–9).
For the story of Graham’s capture by Indians near Fort Malden in Ontario and his escape, see W. B. Allen 1872, pp. 309–10. While Graham was employed on the Survey of the Southern Atlantic and Pacific Railroad in 1852, his party was captured by Apaches and later ransomed (Duvall 2004, p. 148). There is no other mention of his having been captured by Comanches.
In 1822, Graham went to Mexico City and was reputed to have smuggled out the constitution written for the new Mexican government (Duvall 2004, p. 148). Agustín de Iturbide was briefly emperor of Mexico, from May 1822 until his abdication in March 1823 (Encyclopaedia Britannica, britannica.com, accessed 30 October 2015).
In 1832, Graham acquired a lead interest in the town of Galena, Illinois (W. B. Allen 1872, p. 313). The Falls of St Anthony were the only natural waterfalls on the Mississippi; the area began to be commercially developed in the 1830s (see Wills 2005, pp. 17–27).
Thomas Elliott Bramlette married Mary Graham Adams, a widow, in 1874 (ANB). Her first husband was Thomas E. Adams, a Confederate general. Joseph Clay Stiles Blackburn married Theresa Graham in 1858 (ANB). Graham probably alludes to Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s ‘the adorable I am’ or primal self (see Evans 2009, p. 330).
Graham had owned a spa at Harrodsburg Springs in Mercer County, Kentucky. Frederick Peel, son of Robert Peel, visited the establishment, bringing a letter of introduction from Henry Clay (W. B. Allen 1872, p. 334).
Erasmus Darwin, CD’s grandfather, had discussed his theory of sensorial powers in Zoonomia (E. Darwin 1794–6, 1: 32–3, 54–61).
The enclosure has not been identified.

Bibliography

Allen, William B. 1872. A history of Kentucky, embracing gleanings, reminiscences, antiquities, natural curiosities, statistics, and biographical sketches of pioneers, soldiers, jurists, lawyers, statesmen, divines, mechanics, farmers, merchants, and other leading men, of all occupations and pursuits. Louisville, Ky.: Bradley & Gilbert.

ANB: American national biography. Edited by John A. Garraty and Mark C. Carnes. 24 vols. and supplement. New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press. 1999–2002.

Calendar: A calendar of the correspondence of Charles Darwin, 1821–1882. With supplement. 2d edition. Edited by Frederick Burkhardt et al. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 1994.

Darwin, Erasmus. 1794–6. Zoonomia; or, the laws of organic life. 2 vols. London: J. Johnson.

Duvall, James. 2004. Christopher Columbus Graham: Kentucky man of science. Journal of the Kentucky Academy of Science 65: 140–53.

Eckert, Allan, W. 1995. That dark and bloody river: chronicles of the Ohio River Valley. New York: Bantam Books.

Encyclopaedia Britannica: Encyclopaedia Britannica online. www.britannica.com/

Evans, Murray J. 2009. Coleridge as thinker: Logic and Opus maximum. In The Oxford handbook of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, edited by Frederick Burwick. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Goldstein, Alan. 1984. Gerard Troost & his collection. Mineralogical Record 15: 141–7.

Graham, Christopher Columbus. 1869. The true philosophy of mind. Louisville, Ky.: John P. Morton and Company.

McFarlane, Anthony. 2014. War and independence in Spanish America. New York and Abingdon, Oxon.: Routledge.

NDB: Neue deutsche Biographie. Under the auspices of the Historical Commission of the Bavarian Academy of Sciences. 27 vols. (A–Wettiner) to date. Berlin: Duncker & Humblot. 1953–.

Origin: On the origin of species by means of natural selection, or the preservation of favoured races in the struggle for life. By Charles Darwin. London: John Murray. 1859.

Scanlan, P. L. 1940. The military record of Jefferson Davis in Wisconsin. Wisconsin Magazine of History 24: 174–82.

Trask, Kerry A. 2006. Black Hawk: the battle for the heart of America. New York: Henry Holt.

Turner, Wesley B. 2000. The War of 1812: the war that both sides won. 2d edition. Toronto and Oxford: Dundurn Press.

Wills, Jocelyn. 2005. Boosters, hustlers, and speculators: entrepreneurial culture and the rise of Minneapolis and St. Paul. St Paul, Minn.: Minnesota Historical Society Press.

Summary

He has defended Tyndall, CD, and others against attacks of a clergyman.

Letter details

Letter no.
DCP-LETT-10821
From
Christopher Columbus Graham
To
Charles Robert Darwin
Sent from
Public Library, Louisville, Ky.
Source of text
DAR 165: 83–4
Physical description
ALS 4pp inc

Please cite as

Darwin Correspondence Project, “Letter no. 10821,” accessed on 28 March 2024, https://www.darwinproject.ac.uk/letter/?docId=letters/DCP-LETT-10821.xml

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