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How did Civil War-era body measurements get used to support racial hierarchy?

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Overhead view of a diverse group of people standing in a circle, holding each other's hands in a gesture of unity and teamwork. — Race Skin color is one of the variables that has been used to classify people into different racial categories.

During the American Civil War, the U.S. Sanitary Commission and the provost marshal general’s office collected extensive physical data from military conscripts and volunteers, including white, Black, Native American, and mixed-race individuals.12

This systematic collection of body dimensions, known as anthropometry, was used to create massive quantitative tables. Scientists of the era interpreted this data to argue that human races were fundamentally distinct and to reinforce the false, unethical belief that Black, Indigenous, and mixed-race individuals were biologically inferior to whites. By applying these "scientific" methods, researchers sought to provide empirical legitimacy to racial hierarchies, a practice that continued to be used to promote scientific racism well into the 20th century.12