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"""""When we did separate from Great Britain in 1776, more than half the states abolished slavery --New York, Vermont, Connecticut, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, Pennsylvania. Not every state did, you had four in the south that kept it. But you have a huge majority of Founding Fathers that were anti-slavery. Never owned slaves."

I don't understand this quote. Did Barton mean the importation of slaves? There were certainly more than four states in the South that allowed slavery after 1776, and in the year that Washington died, 1799, there were slaves in New York. """""

Barton is talking about the make-up of the U. States in 1776, there were only 4 "southern states" (Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina and Georgia) and in reality there were only 3 (in 1780's America, Virginia was not considered a "southern" state, it was part of the mid-Atlantic region along with New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware and Maryland).

In the east today, we use the Mason-Dixon line(Pennsylvania/Maryland boundary) as our arbitrary boundary between North and South. Historically however, Virginia and Maryland were not considered "southern states" but "mid Atlantic states". Up until the Civil War, economically and socially, Maryland & Virginia were more tied to their northern neighbors (Pennsylvania, New Jersey & Delaware) than they were to the Carolina's. For a good part of the early 19th century, one of the colleges of choice for young Southern gentlemen was Princeton University in Princeton, New Jersey.

As for slavery in New York, I believe they adopted the same system that eventually was used in New Jersey. Slavery was abolished by law but existing slaves could be kept for a certain number of years after abolition according to certain legal qualifications.

I think I read too much into his quote. What threw me is that Prof. Barton was sloppy with the way he phrased it. He said more than half of the states in 1776 abolished slavery, then listed only six, and the way he said "four in the south," instead of all southern states or something similar, made me think he had switched in mid-sentence to a later time period.

You're right about Princeton, but, to be 100% accurate, it was called the College of New Jersey at the time. My screenname refers to Henry Lee II who, although a College of William & Mary man, sent his two oldest sons, "Light-Horse Harry" (Am. Rev. hero, governor of Va., U.S. Rep. from No. Va., and father of Robert E. Lee) and Charles (the second U.S. Attorney-General under Washington and Adams) to the College of N.J.