The Result Of Eight Censuses

We were favored recently by the Superintendant of the Census with a copy of a tabular statement, prepared, in his bureau, which, from its comprehensiveness and condensation, deserves a passing notice.  The table comprises the aggregate population of each State and Territory of the United States every tenth hear, from 1790 to 1860 inclusive, classing in a separate column, at each period and in each state the number of “whites,” “free colored,” and “slaves,” and we have all these aggregates of eight different census in a table 36 inches by 12. – We presume that the reader could hardly, of himself, begin to estimate the amount of human labor that was expended in traveling and obtaining and recording and reporting the details compressed into this space of 36 inches by 12, or the weight in tons of vast volumes of manuscript returns from which this compendium has been reduced.  Would the reader believe that these masses of figures in manuscript, of the eight censuses, would load one hundred wagons?  Yet it is so, incredible as it may appear.  What a labor, then, the reduction of all this to one sheet! – Washington Intelligencer.

– Published in The Davenport Daily Gazette, Davenport, Iowa, Saturday Morning, March 29, 1862, p. 2