The U.S. Constitution’s three-fifths clause required the nation’s enslaved people to be counted in the census — but only three-fifths of them were added to a state’s population when seats in Congress were apportioned. As slavery gradually ended in the Northern states, the clause gave the slaveholding South extra representation in Congress.
The slave schedules
The 1850 and 1860 censuses each included a separate “Slave Schedule” alongside the main count. These schedules listed enslavers by name and, under each, the people they claimed to own. The enslaved themselves were not named. Recorded only by number, age, sex and color, they appear in the schedules as property — people who, under state law, could be bought, sold and taxed.
St. Louis County in 1850
The National Park Service has published a complete transcription of the 1850 Slave Schedule for St. Louis County, Missouri. Many well-known names in St. Louis history appear in it. Among them is Colonel Frederick F. Dent, the father-in-law of Ulysses S. Grant, recorded as enslaving seventeen people at his White Haven estate and thirteen at his city home in the Second Ward of St. Louis.
The transcription follows the original word for word, across the nine categories the census takers recorded:
| Category | What it records |
|---|---|
| Location | Where the enslaver lived |
| Name of slave owner | The enslaver |
| Number of slaves | How many people the enslaver held |
| Age | Each enslaved person’s age |
| Sex | Each enslaved person’s sex |
| Color | “B” for Black, “M” for mulatto (mixed race) |
| Fugitive from the state | Whether the person had escaped |
| Number manumitted | How many had been freed |
| Deaf and dumb, blind, insane or idiotic | The census’s own terms for disabilities |
The last category keeps the census’s nineteenth-century wording, which is how it appears in the original record.
Using the record
The transcription is available from the Park Service as a searchable, downloadable spreadsheet. It was completed in February 2024 at Ulysses S. Grant National Historic Site. The 1860 schedule for the county has been transcribed as well.
Sources
Based on "United States Census Slave Schedule for St. Louis County, 1850," part of the series The History of Slavery in St. Louis, Ulysses S. Grant National Historic Site, National Park Service; transcription by Railey Crews, interpretation intern; rewritten in hubnx’s own words. The source says the enslaved count was “divided by three-fifths”; the clause counted three-fifths of it, as the source’s own figure of 60% shows.
In these publicationsUlysses S Grant National Historic Site
Licence: CC0 1.0 (public domain) · Adapted from www.nps.gov
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