The House refused to amend the journal.
House of Representatives. May 16, 1844.—Mr. Adams wished to present a memorial from certain citizens in relation to errors which they say have been committed in compiling and printing the last census of the United States.
Objection being made, he moved to suspend the rules for the purpose of offering the resolution, and moving to refer it to a committee of five members. The yeas and nays were ordered, and, being taken, the rules were not suspended,—ayes 96, nays 49,—less than two-thirds voting in the affirmative.
House of Representatives. Dec. 10, 1844.—Mr. Adams presented a petition from the American Statistical Society, in relation to certain errors in the last or sixth census.
Mr. Adams said a petition on this subject at the last session was referred to a select committee, and he hoped this petition would take the same direction. He moved the appointment of a select committee of nine members, and that the memorial be printed.
The speaker announced that a majority had decided in favor of a select committee. The motion to print was laid on the table.
House of Representatives. Dec. 13, 1844.—The following is the Select Committee appointed, on the motion of Mr. Adams, to consider the petition from the American Statistical Society in relation to the errors in the sixth census: Messrs. Adams, Rhett, Rayner, Stiles, Maclay, Brengle, Foster, Sheppard, Cary, and Caleb B. Smith.
This was the end of the affair in Congress. The false returns stand to this day in the statistical tables of the census, to convince all cavillers of the unfitness of the negro for freedom. That the reader may know what kind of evidence Mr. Adams had with which to sustain his allegations, we append, as a specimen, an extract from the American Almanac for 1845, p. 156.
The “American Statistical Association,” established in Boston, Mass., sent a memorial to Congress during the past winter, drawn up by Messrs. William Brigham, Edward Jarvis, and J. W. Thornton, in which, though they “confined their investigations to the reports respecting education and nosology,” they exposed an extraordinary mass of errors in the census. We can find room only for a few extracts from this memorial.