As with many other issues in antebellum America, congressional debate over the scope and form of the census became entangled in sectional politics. The 1820 returns had clearly shown that the population of the North was outstripping that of the South. Thereafter, Southerners, increasingly anxious to protect slavery and the Southern way of life, balked at attempts to investigate their "peculiar institution." When the newly formed Census Board recommended to Congress in 1850 that slaves be recorded by name in the same manner as free individuals, Southern congressmen successfully moved that they be listed by number only. Questions regarding the birthplace of each slave and the number of children born to female slaves were deleted from the 1850 census bill as well. Nevertheless, throughout the 1850s, opponents and supporters of slavery used census figures to bolster their arguments for or against slavery. Hinton Helper's 1857 book The Impending Crisis in the South provides an example of this faulty, and consequently dangerous, use of statistics.