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

He made a clean sweep of the Midwest, the Mountain and Border States, the West Coast, appeared to have lost only Arizona in the Southwest.

From Time Magazine Archive

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

From Time Magazine Archive

Border States None of the states have carried integration quite so far as the District of Columbia, but the six Border States, on the whole, have made heartening progress.

From Time Magazine Archive

For 25 years before the Civil War no one knew which way the Border States would go if war came.

From Time Magazine Archive

Neither Tennessee nor Virginia nor any of the Border States had then joined the rebel Confederacy.

From The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 5, November, 1863 by Various