Two or three men and a birthday

This is undoubtedly one of those thing everyone but me has known for a long time, but I just figured out that Abraham Lincoln and Charles Darwin were both born on this day in 1809.

In a story posted last summer, The Abraham Lincoln Blog mocks a goofy cover story run by  Newsweek, speculating about which of these men had a greater impact on history. A more typical web post treats both men as heroes who each, in his own way, helped to emancipate humanity.

Reality, of course is more complicated. Lincoln shared commonly held racist attitudes of his time, and freed the slaves mostly because he needed their help in order to defeat the Confederacy. Darwin's ideas were influenced by the right-wing social economist Thomas Malthus, and helped to influence the unsavory ideologies of social Darwinism and eugenics.

Furthermore, the famous Scopes Trial began at least in part as a publicity stunt designed to bring publicity to the town of Dayton, Tennessee, according to Douglas O. Linder. And William Jennings Bryan, derided on the witness stand by defense lawyer Clarence Darrow, may have been motivated as much by humane ideals as by religious bigotry:

 William Jennings Bryan, three-time Democratic candidate for President and a populist, led a Fundamentalist crusade to banish Darwin's theory of evolution from American classrooms. Bryan's motivation for mounting the crusade is unclear. It is possible that Bryan, who cared deeply about equality, worried that Darwin's theories were being used by supporters of a growing eugenics movement that was advocating sterilization of "inferior stock."

However, according to Wikipedia , Bryan himself built a political career in the segregationist Democratic party of his day by supporting its racist ideology:

Shannon Jones (2006) writes that one of the few topics touched on by historians is Bryan's apparent support of American racism, pointing that Bryan never took a principled stand against white supremacy in the Southern United States. Jones explains that "the ruling elite in the South, the remnants of the old southern slaveholding oligarchy, formed a critical base of the Democratic Party. This Party had defended slavery and secession and had led the struggle against post-Civil War Reconstruction. It had opposed granting suffrage to freed slaves and generally opposed all progressive reforms aimed at alleviating the oppression of blacks and poor whites. No politician could hope for national leadership in the Democratic Party, let alone expect to win the presidency, by attacking the system of racial oppression in the South."

It's a complicated world. There aren't any perfect plaster saints out there.  I ought to have a better concluding sentence, but it's way past my bedtime.