During the Constitutional Convention of 1787, which states in America were considered big or small? What were their individual populations?

by Intelligent_Table913

I was wondering if there are any sources that listed the populations for the 13 states in 1787. Big states like Virginia and Pennsylvania favored proportional representation while small states like Delaware and New Jersey favored equal state representation. I want to know how much of the American population at the time was divided between big and small states.

Kochevnik81

Honestly even though I'm sure you could find some estimates, probably the most solid information for that period will come from the 1790 Census, held a couple years later (and mandated by the just-adopted US Constitution). The US Census Bureau has a number of reports and statistics from the 1790 Census available through its website.

Interestingly, the Census information was collected by US marshals (this was practice to 1870), and was collected according to household. Each household was to enumerate the following persons: the name of the head of the family and the number of persons in each household of the following descriptions: the name of the head of household, the number of free white males of 16 years and older, free white males under 16 years, free white females, all other free persons (by sex and color), and slaves. "Indians not taxed" were not counted in the Census.

Some overviews of that data: the United States in 1790 had a still quite small but rapidly growing population of about 3,929,000. About 698,000 of these people (or almost 18%) were slaves.

Heck, since it's only thirteen states we might as well do a table for the population.

State Total Population Free Whites Other Free Persons Slaves
Connecticut 237,946 232,374 2,808 2,764
Delaware 59,096 46,310 3,899 8,887
Georgia 82,548 52,886 398 29,264
Kentucky 73,677 61,133 114 12,430
Maine 96,540 96,002 538 0
Maryland 319,728 208,649 8,043 103,036
Massachusetts 378,787 373,324 5,463 0
New Hampshire 141,885 141,097 630 158
New Jersey 184,139 169,954 2,762 11,423
New York 340,120 314,142 4,654 21,324
North Carolina 393,751 288,204 4,975 100,572
Pennsylvania 434,373 424,099 6,537 3,737
Rhode Island 68,825 64,470 3,407 948
Tennessee 35,691 31,913 361 3,417
South Carolina 249,073 140,178 1,801 107,094
Vermont 85,539 85,268 255 16
Virginia 747,610 442,117 12,866 292,627

Kentucky and Maine were "Districts" of Virginia and Massachusetts, respectively, and Vermont was in the last stages of settling its claims with New York. Tennessee was "Southwest Territory".

Anyway, that should give a bit of the scope of the state population sizes around 1787. Overall the distance between largest (Virginia) and smallest (Delaware, technically speaking) was not as great as the distance between California and Wyoming today. Slavery had not yet been eliminated north of the Mason-Dixon line, but it can be seen that it was already disproportionately located in southern states, and massively contributed to their population totals (in South Carolina the slave population almost matched the free white population, and it would actually become a supermajority of the state population in the 19th century). Interestingly, Massachusetts was a "big" state in the period - it had been home to some 10% of the total population of the Thirteen Colonies at the time of the Revolution, but its place was steadily slipping (although keep in mind that since the District of Maine was still part of the state, it was the second-biggest state by population in 1790 after Virginia). It was still larger than New York, which actually tended to side with the "small" states at the Constitutional Convention.

Cities themselves were very small in 1790. New York City (ie, the island of Manhattan) had 33,000 inhabitants, and just beat out Philadelphia with 28,000, although that doesn't account for the fact that Northern Liberties was the sixth biggest city (10,000), and Southwark the tenth (5,600), and these have since become neighborhoods in Philly. That should also give a sense how the population was overwhelmingly rural and agricultural in this period (something like 9/10ths of the total).

ETA - whoops, New Jersey got left out. Added in now.