Border States

American  

plural noun

1. U.S. History. the Slave States of Delaware, Maryland, Kentucky, and Missouri, which refused to secede from the Union in 1860–61.

2. the U.S. states touching the Canadian border.

3. certain countries of central and northern Europe that border on the former Soviet Union and belonged to the Russian Empire: Finland, Poland (prior to 1940), Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania.

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Example Sentences

Senator from Kentucky, as the vice-presidential prospect most likely to help the ticket in the Border States and the South.

From Time Magazine Archive

Smith would have to carry most of the Border States to be within striking distance.

From Time Magazine Archive

The eleven states of the Old Confederacy contain 128 electoral votes and five Border States add 42, for a total of 170.

From Time Magazine Archive

They are the cornerstone, the bulwark, among which "bolts" and "splits" and outright transitions occur far less frequently than among the eleven Western States, the eleven Eastern States, the four Border States.

From Time Magazine Archive

The going out of the Border States unfettered the platform.

From History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II by Stanton, Elizabeth Cady