Border States

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.

Example Sentences

Lincoln was addressing a fractured North, not abolitionists, and he knew that striking too soon at slavery might drive the wavering border states into Confederate arms—a shift that could doom the Union cause.

Read more on The Wall Street Journal

Deportations are also under way in Delhi, where some 700 people were picked up and flown out to border states in the last six months.

Read more on BBC

We see it in today’s immigration debates, where sanctuary cities and border states clash over resources and responsibilities.

Read more on Salon

Of the 132,823 guns recovered at crime scenes in Mexico from 2009 to 2018, fully 70% were found to have originated in the U.S. — mostly in Texas and other Southwest border states.

Read more on Los Angeles Times

It specifically instructs occupying the Roosevelt Reservation, a 60-foot-wide strip of land owned by the federal government that stretches through three of the four border states.

Read more on Salon