The first debates over the 1850 census of slaves were, in one sense, a struggle over what the slaveholders would allow the rest of the nation to know about slavery and slaves. Because the Senate committee that drew up the first plans for the 1850 census contemplated recording the names of all persons, slave and free, the first controversy arose between senators who thought that the census could be taken most efficiently and accurately by naming the slaves, and those senators who opposed naming the slaves on idealogical grounds which they disguised as practical objections.

Many southern senators surely believed that requiring a slavemaster to answer queries that personalized individual slaves invested slaves with a dignity that was incompatible with the institution that held them in bondage. Certainly there was never any serious thought that slaves would have an input to the census—for the census taker to enter the plantation quarters and to record personal facts from the lips of slaves would be an unthinkable trespass on the prerogative of slavemasters, the same as if a census taker were to question a white child instead of speaking to the father of the household.

More pointedly, if a rabid abolitionist like New York’s William H. Seward supported enumerating the slaves by name, and even demanded more information about the condition of the South’s slaves, pro-slavery senators would reactively oppose him on principle.

To derail the draft proposal that would have enumerated slaves by name, southern senators, led by South Carolina’s Senator Arthur P. Butler, had to feign a kind of ignorance. Despite the evidence in volumes of deeds, mortgages, bills of sale, and probate records that packed the shelves of every Southern courthouse – and not to speak of the record books and family Bibles in their own houses – slaveowners supposedly could not identify their own slaves. Senator Butler painted a picture of plantations inhabited by hundreds of slaves, whose owners, serenely aloof from life in the slave quarters, only became aware of the identities of young slaves when they were old enough to work in the fields. In this imaginary world, plantation owners – hard-headed businessmen who each managed capital investments and annual crops worth hundreds of thousands of dollars – did not keep records of the names or ages of the slaves who were their principal investment!

In specific contrast to this portrayal by senators from the Carolinas and Alabama of a South of huge plantations peopled by anonymous slaves, Senator Joseph R. Underwood from slaveholding Kentucky excluded his own state from this model of “the South.” He portrayed a land in which slave owners were personally familiar with each of their slaves. These differences between Underwood and the senators from the South may exemplify some of the different attitudes between Border States and Southern States that played out in the secession crisis ten years later.

I have silently edited the Congressional debates transcribed below to omit irrelevant remarks and repetitive arguments, but I have marked ellipses ( . . . ) only when splicing sentences or paragraphs. All page references are to the Congressional Globe, 31st Congress, 1st Session, available at http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/amlaw/lwcglink.html#anchor31

On 9 April 1850, Senator John Davis of Massachusetts opened the Senate debate over which of version of the population forms would be used. Davis’ opening remarks remind us how he (like other white Americans of his day) constructed categories of liberty and slavery strictly in terms of a racial dichotomy – Davis called the two population schedules the “white population” table and the “slave population” table – oblivious to the existence of free persons in the United States who were not white (pages 671 and 672).

Davis’ version of the Schedule 2, Slave Inhabitants, included twelve columns:
(1) Names of slave owners
(2) Names of slaves
Description: (3) Age, (4) Sex, (5) Color
(6) Place of Birth
If a female, the number of children she has had who are:
(7) No. she has had, (8) Known to be living, (9) Known to be dead
(10) Deaf and dumb, blind, insane, or idiotic.
(11) Degree of removal from pure white and black races.
(12) Remarks.

The printed version of this form can be seen at
http://memory.loc.gov/cgi-bin/ampage?collId=llsb&fileName=031/llsb031.db&recNum=436

Senator Arthur P. Butler of South Carolina immediately rose with an amendment, saying: “I move to amend, so that instead of requiring the names of the slaves to be taken, the number only shall be required . . . and I now move to strike out the word ‘names’ and insert the word ‘number.’” (page 672)

Davis: “I believe that the only thing which induced the use of the word ‘names’ in both of the tables [free and slave], was the supposition that a greater degree of accuracy would be thereby ascertained, and any fraud be the more readily detected. However, if gentlemen have any choice on the subject, I am not disposed to object.”

Butler: “The census heretofore taken has only required the numbers of the slaves, and I see no useful information the obtaining of the names can afford. On a plantation where there are one, two, or three hundred slaves, there are perhaps several of the same name, and who are known simply by some familiar designation on the plantation. It can afford no useful information, and will make a great deal of labor.”

Davis’ concern was that the census bureau could validate the numbers; in previous censuses slaves had been counted among other members of each household, but if census-takers were merely to produce a separate tally of slaves, how could auditors assure that such numbers were accurate? He asked Butler, “If we are only to get the aggregate number of slaves, how are we to ascertain the owners?”

Butler: “By providing that the number of slaves owned by him shall be put opposite to the name of each owner.”

David: “Then we shall lose the benefit of the classification of ages.”

Butler: “Not at all. The age and sex will remain – everything but the name.”

At this point, Senator Joseph R. Underwood of Kentucky rose to defend inclusion of the names. As a member of the Senate committee that had drafted the proposed census tables, he had rehearsed in his mind many times the procedures census-takers should follow to get the required information speedily and accurately. As the representative of a slaveholding state, he felt he could speak with authority on the workings of slavery in his country: “If you leave the age and sex of each slave, it will be perceived at once that the master and the census-taker must have his attention directed to each individual slave. Then, as each individual slave upon the plantation must constitute the subject of particular reference at the time, in order to ascertain the age and the sex, and other inquiries which the census table proposes to enumerate, it does seem to me that he must necessarily get the name.”

Senator George E. Badger of North Carolina interjected a mockery of slaves’ names: “What do you want of such names as Big Cuff or Little Cuff?”

Butler: “Or of Little Jonah and Big Jonah?”

Some senators laughed.

Underwood: “I have no particular anxiety to see these classical names that have been suggested, and whether it be Cicero or Cuff, it makes no difference to me. As it is necessary that attention must be directed to each individual, it occurred to me that the census taker could certainly make more progress by putting down the name, instead of being obliged to make a series of calculations. Then all that will be necessary will be, to put down the name, and to carry out the age and sex opposite to it; otherwise, the census taker will have, in the course of his examination, to take a child of one age and put him down, and make a memorandum, and then go on and take another child of another age, and put him down, and so on; and before he can make all the inquiries in regard to each on the plantation, he will have a whole sheet of paper covered with calculations and figures. I do believe the work can be done quicker and faster by making an entry of the names, and passing from one to the other, and thus save all of this calculation. This same process has been adopted in reference to the white population. The old system of proceeding was, to put down the population according to a classification of ages, as between five and ten; and ten and fifteen; and fifteen and twenty; and so on. The effect of that arrangement was, to require the census taker and the head of the family, in the calculation to which I have alluded, to ascertain the particular ages, and what class the particular individual should be enumerated under; and we thought . . . that it would really take more time and labor to make this classification . . . than it would merely to put down the names and ages – the simplest of all processes. I believe, therefore, that instead of imposing additional labor, it would save time and labor.”

Senator Robert M. T. Hunter of Virginia: “Is it proposed to publish the names?”

Underwood: “Not at all; there is a total mistake on that subject. The names of the white population are not proposed to be published, nor are the names of the blacks.” Only the statistical tables produced by counting the names, ages, et cetera, were to be published.

Senator David L. Yulee of Florida could not see the use of recording any names: “I wish to ask the Senator what public advantage there can be in having on the files of the department the names of all the inhabitants of the United States, white or black? What advantage can there be to know that there is a John Smith in New York, another in Kentucky, and another in Georgia? It has never been done before, and will certainly be a work of great labor and expense.”

Senator Underwood patiently repeated his explanation of how recording all the names would save time for census takers, and would be more accurate, because all tabulation and calculation would take place later, instead of on the spot. “I imagined myself going about with the census taker,” said Underwood, “and how he would talk with the head of a family, and how he would make his memorandums as he went along, and the conclusion was irresistible that he would do the business faster by merely putting down the name and age.” (pages 672-3)

Senator Jeremiah Clemens of Alabama objected: “There is not a man in the South owning a hundred negroes who knows scarcely any more of the names of the slave children than I do. He would be obliged to send the census taker to the negro quarters himself, to ascertain the information.”

Underwood shot back: “If the slave owner cannot give the name of the children, how is he to give the age?”

Clemens: “He knows how many children there are, and can tell about the time they were born. Say that he has a negro woman of the name of Eliza with four children – he can state about the time each was born. As to their names, he would not know anything about that until the children had reached the age of twelve or fourteen.”

Underwood: “I cannot speak for the large negro owners in the South, but I can of that description of people and the negroes in my own State. And I venture to say that there is no plantation in my quarter, although the slaves are nothing like as numerous as they are in the South, but what the owner can tell you the name of every person on the plantation, and that without hesitation. We generally keep a record of their names and ages. And I should suppose that while the farmers of the South were recording, according to the suggestion of the Senator from Alabama, the ages of their slave children, they could put down something for their names also.”

Clemens: “I did not say that they had a record of their ages, but merely that they could tell very nearly what they were.”

Underwood: “Well, if there was any record of their ages I should suppose it would be connected with their names. If no record is kept of the age, then it has to be guessed at, and the name may as well be guessed at also, for it is wholly immaterial. But you must describe the children in some way, or take and put them down as child number one, child number two, and give the age of each. It will do just as well to designate them by numbers as by name, provided it secures the basis of the calculation which it is necessary to make afterwards. An oath that it is the correct name of the child is not required, and if the age of a child can be given, so can a name, and if all are given the same name it makes no difference. . . . The idea suggested, that the farmer will not know the names of his slaves makes no sort of difference. He can know as much about the names as the age; and all we can expect is, to come as nearly to what is precisely correct as possible, and that by the safest and most correct means. I have nothing more, I believe, to say on this particular subject.”

Butler: “I cannot see the use of taking the names; in fact, I am surprised that the idea is even entertained. My friend from Kentucky generally has my vote; but upon this matter we see so differently that I am compelled to be at issue with him.”

Senator Butler’s amendment, to replace slaves’ names with numbers, was then put to a vote and passed.