A FOUNDING WINGNUT

In The Debate, I found several instances of the belief that climate has a dominant influence on character. Specifically, some who argued against a federal constitution believed that one could not make laws that would suit both the people of Maine and the people of, say, Georgia, because the warmer climate induces sloth and dissipation. (I think Stephen Jay Gould wrote about this essentially racist attitude in some of his essays but I can't recall which ones.) One anti-Federalist, James Winthrop, had a more drastic theory of our species and this can be seen in his objection to allowing the federal government sole control over naturalization (The Debate, Part One, p. 628):

ON THE VIRTUES OF "PURE BLOOD" AND LIMITED FEDERAL POWER
"AGRIPPA" [JAMES WINTHROP] IX
Massachusetts Gazette (Boston)
December 28, 1787

...for though most of the states may be willing for certain reasons to receive foreigners as citizens, yet reasons of equal weight may induce other states, differently circumstanced, the keep their blood pure. Pennsylvania has chosen to receive all that would come there. Let any indifferent person judge whether that state in point of morals, education, energy is equal to any of the eastern states; the small state of Rhode-Island only excepted. Pennsylvania in the course of a century has acquired her present extent and population, at the expense of religion and good morals. The eastern states have, by keeping separate from the foreign mixtures, acquired their present greatness in the course of a century and an half, and have preserved their religion and morals. They have also preserved that manly virtue which is equally fitted for rendering them respectable in war, and industrious in peace.

In Part One's Biographical Notes, we learn that Winthrop was the son of a Harvard mathematician and was graduated from Harvard in 1769. He was also turned down twice for his late father's professorship at Harvard "because of his eccentricities." (p. 1053)