The Theory of Evolution Exploded?

Chapter 3 of a book by Charles Carroll (1900) is entitled: The Theory of Evolution Exploded; Man was Created a Man, and did not Develop from an Ape. This sentiment is in keeping with the views of a goodly number of present-day creationists, who believe that the Bible is the true guide to the history of all life on Earth. That is, these creationists believe the Bible is literally true, starting with: “In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth” (Genesis 1:1, King James Version). Earlier, in 1867, just after the end of the US Civil War, Buckner T Payne, writing as Ariel, had produced another creationist tract, which started by claiming “Truth, though sometimes slow in its power, is like itself, always consistent; and like its AUTHOR, will always be triumphant. The Bible is true.”
Once we have accepted that Payne has the Bible’s truth understood correctly, after the civil war the consequences were simple:

The negro is now free. There are but two things on earth, that may be done with him now, and the people and government of this country escape destruction. One or the other God will make you do, or make you accept his punishment, as he made Babel, Sodom and Gomorrah, and the Canaanites, before you. You must send him back to Africa or re-enslave him.

But why? Payne asserts that the “white race” is human, whereas the “negro race” is beastly ( negros are beasts): “God has made one for immortality, and the other to perish with the animals of the earth.” Payne also asserts that the Bible establishes slaveholding as the preferred state of affairs (“We mention it as a matter of history, to confirm the Bible fact, that God always selects slaveholders, or from a slaveholding nation, the media through which he confers his blessings on mankind. Would it not be wisdom to heed it now?”). The title of Payne’s tract seems to say it all; indeed, it is a little story in itself:

THE NEGRO: WHAT IS HIS ETHNOLOGICAL STATUS? IS HE THE PROGENY OF HAM? IS HE A DESCENDANT OF ADAM AND EVE? HAS HE A SOUL? OR IS HE A BEAST IN GOD'S NOMENCLATURE? WHAT IS HIS STATUS AS FIXED BY GOD IN CREATION? WHAT IS HIS RELATION TO THE WHITE RACE?

Payne was a creationist of sorts, and Carroll (also a creationist) said of Payne/Ariel “History will yet accord to ‘Ariel’ the proud distinction of being the first man of modern times to openly and fearlessly declare the negro ‘a beast,’ and support his declaration with scriptural proof.” but – as there is no clear exposition of the implications of creation in the Bible – Carroll disagreed in some respects with Payne but was more concerned to be a worker “in that great cause, which, sooner or later will culminate in the expulsion of the negro from his present unnatural position in the family of man, and the resumption of his proper place among the apes.” The title of Carrol’s book was also a little story:

“THE NEGRO A BEAST” . . . OR . . . “IN THE IMAGE OF GOD”
The Reasoner of the Age, the Revelator of the Century!
The Bible as it is!
The Negro and His Relation to the Human Family!
The Negro a beast, but created with articulate speech, and hands, that he may be of service to his master—the White man.
The Negro not the Son of Ham,
Neither can it be proven by the Bible, and the argument of the theologian who would claim such, melts to mist before the thunderous and convincing arguments of this masterful book.

As Montesquieu observed about slaves (in The spirit of the laws, 1748): “It is impossible for us to consider these persons as men, because, if we consider them as men, one starts to believe that we are not Christians ourselves.” The universe exists and so it seems it must have been created. Some see a Creator, and some see a Creator whose son was Jesus – this does not mean that a Christian has to see all the scriptures as inerrant. If the scriptures were inerrant we would not have disagreements about the growth of humanity.
[Update 2011-06-05]
See my piece on White people have souls for a few more ideas on the topic.