Exactly. For center of population, as for center of mass, position matters. The farther you are from the center of population, the greater your weight. One F

Exactly. For center of population, as for center of mass, position matters. The farther you are from the center of population, the greater your weight. One Floridian might contribute the same southward pull as ten Virginians. The bottom line is that America was still an agricultural nation in 1850. The population of the northern states was biased towards the south, where farming was more productive. Meanwhile, the Deep South had a large slave population, because that was where the cotton grew. Thus, Texas and Louisiana had far more people than Minnesota Territory. Mississippi had more people than Wisconsin. Alabama had more people than Michigan. And Georgia had more people than ... well, Ontario is not part of the United States. Oh sure, there were a lot of people in Illinois, Ohio, Indiana, and Pennsylvania. But these states were just too far south to exert much of a northward pull.