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For example, although it's not the intent of the passage in question, Darwin notes as an apparently established fact that the "civilized races" are superior, in an evolutionary sense, to "the savage races."

Perhaps you'd care to provide a published thought from anyone of Darwin's time that claimed otherwise.

If you had any knowledge of history you would know that on the Beagle voyage, Darwin disputed the ship's captain's defense of slavery, and the good Christian captain refused to speak to Darwin for some time.

From where I sit I could find within half a mile, a dozen Republican voters who believe whites are intellectually superior to blacks. In Darwin's time their ancestors would have been slave owners or wannabe slave owners. With the blessing of the Bible.

Perhaps you'd care to provide a published thought from anyone of Darwin's time that claimed otherwise.

First off, you must take Darwin's words at face value: he clearly places "civilized races" further along the evolutionary continuum than the "savage races" from which (as his passage makes clear) he believed they descended and who, in turn, descended from the apes. The passage would otherwise make no sense.

Whether or not Darwin opposed slavery, and regardless of the reasons why he did so, the obvious interpretation of the aforementioned passage is that Darwin did indeed place humans on an evolutionary continuum, and he strongly implied that the civilized humans would displace the less evolved savages.

As for Darwin's contemporaries, many made the logical leap. For example, Herbert Spencer is called the father of Social Darwinism. He essentially held that "Darwin's theory of evolution of biological traits in a population by natural selection can also be applied to competition between human societies or groups within a society."