The 1840 census "madness" of free Black Northerners: Jarvis exposes it, Calhoun uses it anyway (US, 1840–1845)

SUMMARYThe 1840 census "madness" of free Black Northerners: Jarvis exposes it, Calhoun uses it anyway (US, 1840–1845) [Connections: Masonic color line, asylums, castles, wight, Nov 5, 2026]

RECORDThe Library of Virginia's archivist Kevin Shupe (2020) summarizes the figures. The 1840 census listed about 1 in 143 Black residents of the free states as insane, and 1 in 34 in New England. In the South it listed 1 in 1,605 enslaved people. Edward Jarvis, in "Insanity Among the Coloured Population of the Free States," American Journal of the Medical Sciences (January 1844), showed that the returns for Worcester, Massachusetts, recorded all 133 white asylum inmates as Black. He also found many places reporting more insane Black people than Black inhabitants. On 18 April 1844, Secretary of State John C. Calhoun wrote to British minister Richard Pakenham that "the census and other authentic documents show that" the condition of Africans worsened where states had ended slavery. John Quincy Adams declared that "atrocious misrepresentations had been made." Calhoun's reviewer, William A. Weaver, conceded errors but called them "as likely to be on one side as on the other" (January 1845)

PATTERNA federal count produced false "madness" among free Black people, and the State Department used it to defend slavery

LENS (WW9)"Evidence for status quo!" The official census was the forgery here, and a country doctor caught it

OPENRead Calhoun's full letter (Senate Documents, 28th Cong., 1st Sess., pp. 50–53, per elektratig blog) and Jarvis's 1844 article in scan

SOURCELibrary of Virginia, "Slavery, Madness, and the 1840 Census" (2020); APA Foundation: Edward Jarvis.