Want, Vice, and Pestilence
U.S. Government Census officials had some explaining to do in 1871. The 1870 census was a disappointment due to “finding the population of the country below 40 millions”. In the 1870 census document there is a discussion about the original forecast of 41.5 million versus the actual result of 38.1 million in population.
“But for the war and for causes which, whether due to the war or not, came in at nearly the same time, the population of the United States might have been expected, according to ascertained rates of increase, to be in the neighborhood of forty-one and a half millions on the 1st of June, 1870.”
The census officials then begin breaking down the 3.4 million difference, though they describe it as a difference of 3 million. What is more than 400,000 people amongst friends?
They begin with the “retardation of the increase in the colored population”. In this section they explain that they expected an increase of one million in population, but the increase was only 438,178.
“Drawn largely from the plantations, where their increase was natural, rapid, and sure, to cities and camps, where want, vice, and pestilence made short work of the multitudes hastily gathered, inadequately provided for, and left for the first time to their own Control, while so much of the impulse, to procreation as depended on the profits of slave-breeding was withdrawn by the abolition of chattelism, it is only to be wondered at that the colored people of the South have held their own in the ten years since 1860.”
The government of the United States admits that more than 500,000 freed men, women, and children who suffered and died were “inadequately provided for”. Worse still, they partially blame the newly freed people by suggesting “vice” was part of the issue. It displays the racism that existed in the federal government. The Confederacy did not inflict want and pestilence on the black population in the South. The Union did. Lincoln and the Union ended slavery as a tactic to win the war. There was no concern for the welfare of blacks in the South.
