U.S. Census Office, The Total Population and Its Elements at Each Census: 1790-1890 (1898)

This series of proportional pie charts was included in the 1890 Statistical Atlas of the United States published under the direction of Henry Gannett. It is part of a larger display of graphs and charts on the population of the United States from 1790 to 1890. Each circle is proportional to the total population of the United States at the time. From 1790 to 1840, the population was classified exclusively as either “white” or “colored,” with gray representing the Black population, both enslaved and free, and pink representing the white population. In 1850 and 1860, a third category—“foreign born,” or immigrant—was introduced, and the “white” category was revised to “native white” to distinguish white individuals born in the United States from those born abroad. Beginning in 1870 and continuing through 1890, a fourth category appeared: “native born of foreign parentage,” referring to individuals born in the United States to immigrant parents. In addition, during this period, "colored" came to include Chinese, Japanes, and Indigenous peoples. Across these decades, both the immigrant population and the population born to immigrant parents increased steadily. Although white Americans born to U.S.-born parents remained the largest population group throughout the period, their proportion declined between 1870 and 1890. Gannett points out in the report that in 1890, whites of native birth and parentage "constituted but little more than one-half of the total population” (p. 20). According to historian Paul Schor, such statistics worried nativists of the time. In his book, Counting Americans: How the US Census Classified the Nation, Schor argues that proponents of the theory of "race suicide" believed that "new immigrants, who would work for lower pay, caused Americans of old stock (that is, at least second-generation, the authentic “native Americans”) to have fewer children, because the economic prospects of their descendants were reduced by the presence of these cheap workers" (p. 148). Notably, the 1890 Census was used to restrict immigration in the Immigration Act of 1924.