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• slave state
  slave state

  noun

  any state, nation, etc., where slavery is legal or officially condoned.
• Slave State
  Slave State

  noun

  history any of the 15 Southern states in which slavery was legal until the Civil War

slave state

American  

noun

1. any state, nation, etc., where slavery is legal or officially condoned.

2. U.S. History. Slave States, the states that permitted slavery between 1820 and 1860: Alabama, Arkansas, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, Mississippi, Missouri, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, and Virginia.

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Slave State British  

noun

1. history any of the 15 Southern states in which slavery was legal until the Civil War

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Etymology

Origin of slave state

An Americanism dating back to 1800–10

Example Sentences

See Examples For:

slave state Slave State

By 1854, Cuba was one of Spain’s few remaining New World colonies, and Southern expansionists coveted it—and its lucrative sugar plantations—as a new U.S. slave state.

From Barron's ● Jan. 18, 2026

The most pointed Jewish response to Morris Raphall’s pro-slavery sermon came from David Einhorn, a Reform rabbi who bravely denounced the institution though he lived in Baltimore, the largest city in the northernmost slave state.

From Slate ● Apr. 10, 2025

But the issue was supposedly resolved with the Missouri Compromise, which admitted Maine as a free state and Missouri as a slave state.

From Salon ● Dec. 16, 2023

"My family had nothing to do with slavery. California was never a slave state," he said.

From BBC ● Jul. 1, 2023

Arkansas, a slave state, becomes the twenty-fifth state.

From "In the Shadow of Liberty" by Kenneth C. Davis

The second problem was this: if Slavery was to be legal in one State and illegal in another, what was to be the status of a slave escaping from a Slave State into a free?

From A History of the United States by Chesterton, G. K. (Gilbert Keith)

The bitterness of the struggle over the admission of Missouri as a Slave State in 1820, under the Missouri Compromise, was to be revived by the Conspirators, at the earliest possible moment.

From The Great Conspiracy, Volume 5 by Logan, John Alexander

The belief in a Southern economic solidarity so complete that the secession of any one Slave State would compel the secession of all the others, that belief had been proved fallacious.

From Lincoln; An Account of his Personal Life, Especially of its Springs of Action as Revealed and Deepened by the Ordeal of War by Stephenson, Nathaniel W. (Nathaniel Wright)

Every State was nominally a Slave State; but slaveholders were divided into two classes.

From The Continental Monthly, Vol 6, No 5, November 1864 Devoted To Literature And National Policy by Various

The Illinois Senators had voted for the admission of Missouri as a Slave State, while her only Representative in the Lower House voted against it.

From Fifty Years of Public Service by Cullom, Shelby M.