1. The Census and the Civil War Margo Anderson Distinguished Professor, History & Urban Studies University of Wisconsin – Milwaukee Milwaukee, WI 53201 margo@uwm.edu

2. Some History: Why Does the U.S. Take a Census The 1787 Constitution mandated that the federal government count the population every ten years and reapportion seats in the House of Representatives and Electoral College on the basis of the count. 2

3. Building the “United States of America” after the Revolution, 1787 3

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5. Preamble to the U.S. Constitution, 1787 “We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.”

6. Allocating Political Power among the States: Article 1, Section 2, of the U.S. Constitution "Representatives and direct Taxes shall be apportioned among the several States which may be included within this Union, according to their respective Numbers, which shall be determined by adding to the whole Number of free Persons, including those bound to Service for a Term of Years, and excluding Indians not taxed, three fifths of all other Persons. The actual Enumeration shall be made within three Years after the first Meeting of the Congress of the United States, and within every subsequent Term of ten Years, in such Manner as they shall by Law direct." 6

7. Importance of the Census The United States was the first nation in the history of the world to take a population census and use it to allocate seats in a national assembly according to population. 7

8. Implementing the System First census was taken in 1790. The House of Representatives and Electoral College were first reapportioned in 1792 Immediately, government officials and the general public recognized the significance of the new system for allocating representation. The U.S. has had one of the most demographically dynamic and diverse populations in the history of the world. The combination of the census as mechanism to adjust power and resources each decade, in conjunction with the demographic dynamism and diversity, made the census central to the functioning of the society and state 8

9. US Census Population Counts, 1790- 2010

10. Focusing on the Ante Bellum Period: US Population, 1790-1870

11. States in the Union and Seats in the House of Representatives, 1790-1870

12. The Geographic Expansion of the Population

13. The Problem… Population growth was not uniform. The slave states did not grow as fast as the free states, so lost power in the House of Representatives and Electoral College each decade. In the free states, abolition of slavery was becoming a major political goal. The controversy arose every time Congress considered admitting new states to the union. By 1850, southerners recognized they might not be able to prevent the national government from abolishing slavery and were beginning to talk of disunion.

14. The Growing Political Imbalance between Free and Slave States in the House of Representatives, 1790--1860

15. John C. Calhoun, March 4, 1850 “It is a great mistake to suppose that disunion can be effected by a single blow. The cords which bind these States together in one common Union are far too numerous and powerful for that. Disunion must be the work of time. It is only through a long process, and successively, that the cords can be snapped until the whole fabric falls asunder. Already the agitation of the slavery question has snapped some of the most important, and has greatly weakened all the others.”

16. Congressman James Thompson (Democrat - Pennsylvania), Speech in House of Representatives, April 24, 1850 “... this /census/ bill--a sort of interlude in the great context of the day--contains nothing of the tragic interest that surrounds the question that has so long claimed the attention of this body, the dissolution of the Union. It regards the Union as it is, and I trust it will be for ages to come. In place of regarding it in fragments, weakened and distracted, its object is to ascertain its strength and resources, in its unity and beauty.”

17. Francis Edmonds, Taking the Census, 1853 17

18. “The Great Tribulation,” The Saturday Evening Post, 1860 18

19. The ties that bind break… Compromise maintained the union in the 1850s. But in 1860, the next census (the 8 th ) and the presidential election signaled the collapse of the state. The census count proceeded, but by the time the numbers were reported in the spring of 1861, Southern states had seceded, and the Confederate attack on Fort Sumter began the war. Census officials and their data were mobilized for war.

20. Joseph C.G. Kennedy, Preliminary Report of the Eighth Census, 1862 “It is a subject of congratulation that the unhappy state of affairs which has interposed to impede the ordinary course of events has not interfered with the rendition of complete returns from all sections of our country, and that we are enabled to represent the condition of all the great elements of a nation's prosperity as they existed in the year 1860--a circumstance, probably, of no trifling significance in facilitating the early and happy settlement of our domestic troubles.“ Kennedy hoped to reunite the country, but he also supported the war effort.

21. The Census and the War Effort: Two Developments First, the census data were mined to support political and military strategy Second, officials mined census results for the implications of abolition.

22. Political and Military Strategy What should the quotas be to raise an army? What natural resources were available for the war effort? What use can military commanders make of information on local resources in the field? How can one understand political support for the Confederacy?

23. Keeping Virginia in the Union, June 1861: Concentration of the Slave Population

24. Recognizing the Power of Numbers, September 1861: Concentration of the Slave Population in the South

25. Abolishing Slavery The census maps literally allowed Lincoln and his cabinet to “see” the issue of the emancipation of the 4 million slaves. When Francis Bicknell Carpenter was commissioned to memorialize the Emancipation Proclamation, he put the census map in the corner of the painting.

26. First Reading of the Emancipation Proclamation, Francis Bicknell Carpenter, 1864 26

27. Abolishing Slavery The Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution also abolished the Three Fifths Compromise, and thus changed the formula for the apportionment of the House of Representatives and the Electoral College. Once again census numbers mattered, and if I had more time, we could follow this story to the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments and Reconstruction. But that is a story for another day.

28. Thank you. For more information, contact me, margo@uwm.edu or take a look at The American Census, A Social History, Second Edition (Yale University Press, 2015).margo@uwm.edu