Slavery in the SouthA large majority of whites in the South supported slavery even though less than a quarter of them owned slaves because they believed it was a necessary evil and that it was a major Southern institution. In 1800 the population of the United States included 893,602 slaves, of which only 36,505 were in the northern states. Vermont, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New York, and New Jersey provided for the emancipation of their slaves before 1804, most of them by gradual measures. The 3,953,760 slaves in the 1860 census were in the Southern states. Prominent statesmen of the nation's early existence, such as Thomas Jefferson and George Washington, viewed slavery as evil but necessary. Individuals and groups of people from almost all sects defended slavery. Overall, anti-slavery opinions grew steadily; but many who personally held strong antislavery views hesitated to actively join the abolitionist agitation, unwilling to challenge what many citizens believed to be their rights. Those white Southerners who did not necessarily like slavery supported it because they felt it was a Southern right to be able to have slavery. Slavery thus became an increasingly Southern institution. The abolition of slavery in the North, begun in the Revolutionary era and largely completed around 1830, divided the United States into the slaveholding South and the free North. When this happened, slavery came to define the essence of the South: defending slavery meant being pro-Southern, while opposition to slavery was considered anti-Southern. Although most white Southerners did not own slaves (the percentage of white families owning slaves declined from 35% to 26% among the 18... middle of paper... weak and degraded, pro-slavery advocates responded that only slavery could save the South from the evils of unleashed modernity. From the mid-1840s, the struggle over slavery became central to the American politics of Northerners who were committed to free soil, the idea that the new territories. Westerners were to be reserved exclusively for free white settlers, they clashed repeatedly with Southerners who insisted that any limitations on the expansion of slavery were unconstitutional, an interference with the Southern order, and a grave affront to the South's honor politically and economically . cause.