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  • This article recovers the overlooked role of quantification in shaping antebellum Black knowledge claims about freedom and slavery. It uses the political controversy surrounding the census of 1840 to highlight the extent to which African American activists in New York City rooted a pro-Black and anti-slavery politics in the growing authority of numbers. Owing to a series of clerical errors, the disputed sixth decennial census—the first to solicit the number of individuals designated as “insane” or “idiots” throughout the population—indicated that African Americans in the North were far more likely to suffer from “insanity” than their counterparts in the South. Unsurprisingly, exultant pro-slavery ideologues wasted no time in adding the census to their growing repertoire of evidence supporting the peculiar institution. Black New Yorkers, however, understood that the conclusions drawn from the census were a product of a racist statistical practice, and not a true reflection of either Black freedom or of quantification’s radical potential. Using an 1844 memorial to the United States Senate produced by Black activists in New York City, this article argues that African Americans were resourceful quantifiers who strategically employed quantitative arguments to dispute the claim that Blackness was incompatible with freedom. Indeed, close study of the memorial reveals the extent to which activists’ use of quantification to undermine pro-slavery expansionism, represent slavery’s fatal violence, and affirm the degree to which they were thriving in freedom is indicative of a much more robust and underappreciated culture of numeracy among antebellum African Americans.

Dernière mise à jour depuis la base de données : 15/02/2026 13:00 (EST)

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