Policymakers used census data to justify slavery as better than freedom.

Evidence

In April 1844, months after withdrawing his own presidential candidacy, Secretary Calhoun informed the British foreign secretary that the treaty of annexation was a done deal. Slavery in Texas was a concern of neither England nor the US government. The United States must not emancipate its slaves because, as the census had proved, “the condition of the African” was worse in freedom than in slavery. — Ibram X. Kendi, Stamped from the Beginning, 484

Categorization

• XREF: Directly evidences Kendi’s core inversion: policy (slavery’s continuation) came first, and statistical ‘proof’ was marshaled to justify it — connects to the reader’s central testing project.