A "Supposititious Enumeration": The Role of Population Estimates at the 1787 Constitutional Convention

IF 0.2 Q2 HISTORY
Robert J. Gough
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Abstract

abstract:The delegates to the Federal Convention of 1787 needed to know the population of the United States in order to distribute representation. They faced problems, however, in doing so. They had only fragmentary and often outdated census estimates. Some delegates unhelpfully withheld information from their colleagues about their state's population. The legacy of the Confederation Congress influenced them to be more concerned about the relative rather than the absolute size of states' populations. For whatever reasons, the population estimates of states which circulated among them disagreed among themselves. Furthermore, skepticism about quantification remained strong, and the ability of the delegates to do numerical analysis was limited. Consequently, the population estimates they put in the Constitution were significantly revised by the Census of 1790, but because of ambiguities in the Constitution about apportionment, Congress struggled to reallocate representation. In sum, numbers were malleable agents in shaping Constitutional affairs in transactional ways, not precise yardsticks to resolve conflicts. The gradual introduction of quantification into public affairs in the late-eighteenth century, represented by the creation of the United States census, increased contentiousness rather than resolved differences. These events remind Americans in the twenty-first century that counting the nation's population has always been a difficult and contentious endeavor.
“假设性枚举”:人口估计在1787年制宪会议中的作用
参加1787年联邦会议的代表们需要了解美国的人口,以便分配代表。然而,他们在这样做时遇到了问题。他们只有零碎且往往过时的人口普查估计。一些代表毫无益处地向他们的同事隐瞒了有关本州人口的信息。联邦大会的遗产影响了他们更关心各州人口的相对规模,而不是绝对规模。无论出于何种原因,在它们之间流通的各州的人口估计彼此不一致。此外,对量化的怀疑仍然很强烈,代表们进行数值分析的能力有限。因此,在1790年的人口普查中,他们对宪法中的人口估计进行了重大修改,但由于宪法中关于分配的含糊不清,国会很难重新分配代表。总而言之,在以交易方式塑造宪法事务方面,数字是可塑的代理人,而不是解决冲突的精确尺度。以美国人口普查为代表的量化在18世纪后期逐渐引入公共事务,增加了争议,而不是解决了分歧。这些事件提醒21世纪的美国人,统计国家人口一直是一项困难而有争议的工作。
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来源期刊
CiteScore
0.30
自引率
0.00%
发文量
18
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