With 2020 at the halfway point, this has already been an incredible year. In the past six months, America has endured a near-war with Iran, a presidential impeachment, a screwed-up start to the Democrats’ primary contests, the deadliest pandemic in a century, an economic meltdown, and the worst rioting and protests in 50 years.
Oh, yeah — the 2020 census is being taken too.
Given the relentless barrage of breaking news, it’s easy to forget that Uncle Sam’s once-a-decade national headcount is underway. And like everything else in this insanely topsy-turvy year, it has been tough going. The country shutting down, then partially reopening, and now partially closing again has made the task of reaching millions who didn’t respond to the census questionnaire especially daunting. But the U.S. Census Bureau insists it’s up the challenge and is pressing ahead as best it can. To borrow that old entertainment saying, the census must go on.
Still, trying to reach millions of people who are in quarantine is no easy task. It wasn’t much easier for the very first census, either.
Small-scale censuses were taken in the American colonies in the 18th century, but never anything like the one the year-old United States government undertook in 1790. In fact, you can even argue it was the very first modern national population count; similar ones in Britain and France began after ours commenced.
Plans were made, prayers were probably said, and the plucky young republic set off counting noses. Census Day that year was Aug. 2, much later 2020’s April 1 official start. The census was conducted by U.S. Marshals serving as “enumerators.” On their shoulders fell the unenviable task of going door to door and filling out forms at every household they encountered.
When dawn broke that Monday morning, they headed out on foot, on horseback, and even by boat, scattering around the original 13 states as well as the Kentucky, Vermont, Maine, and Southwest Territories (now known as Tennessee).
The head honcho supervising the massive project was Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson, who reveled in the plan’s countless small details.
Remember, there were no paved roads in 1790. Simply reaching isolated hamlets and mountain hollow communities was downright arduous. Since the census was brand new to most people, some folks didn’t take kindly to a stranger showing up at their door asking questions, even though there were only six questions on that very first form (as opposed to nine on today’s basic questionnaire).
Enumerators wanted to know the head of household and how many people lived there. Then, they got down to specifics: How many were free white males age 16 and up (thus gauging both the nation’s workforce and the number of men available for military service in time of crisis)? How many free white males were under the age of 16? How many free white females were there? How many other persons lived there? And finally, how many slaves were there?
That last question was particularly touchy, as you can obviously understand. In fact, disagreement over how to count enslaved African Americans had very nearly scuttled the Constitutional Convention three years earlier. A compromise ultimately resulted in slaves being counted as three-fifths of a person. (It wasn’t until 1870 that Native Americans were even counted at all.)
Once the paperwork was filled out, the completed forms were taken back to Philadelphia (the national capital at the time) and counted. The final tally found that there were 3.9 million people.
Nobody was happy with the finished product. President George Washington and Jefferson both felt the actual population was much larger. Almost every census taken since then has had the same complaint of an undercount too.
Given the challenges posed by the COVID-19 outbreak, we’ll likely hear it yet again when the 2020 census numbers are released early next year.
J. Mark Powell (@JMarkPowell) is a contributor to the Washington Examiner’s Beltway Confidential blog. He’s the vice president of communications at Ivory Tusk Consulting, a South Carolina-based agency. A former broadcast journalist and government communicator, his “Holy Cow! History” column is available at jmarkpowell.com.
