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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

Robert Anderson, son of a Revolutionary War officer, a cousin of Chief Justice John Marshall, and a West Point graduate from the loyal slave state of Kentucky.

From Slate ● Sep. 24, 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

As Pennsylvania was a free state and Maryland was a slave state, it came to be regarded as the border between the free North and slaveholding South. k Several Civil War battles have two names.

From "Lincoln's Last Days: The Shocking Assassination that Changed America Forever" by Bill O'Reilly

Free laborers will not go there, although few slaves are there to be found; for they well know that there is no respect or standing for the free laborer in any Slave State.

From The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, No. 57, July, 1862 by Various

In 1792 out of old territory a new Slave State was made and Kentucky came into the Union.

From The Trial of Theodore Parker For the "Misdemeanor" of a Speech in Faneuil Hall against Kidnapping, before the Circuit Court of the United States, at Boston, April 3, 1855, with the Defence by Theodore Parker

Several legislatures, by unanimous votes, protested against admitting a new Slave State, and when the new Congress assembled in 1819 it became the principal issue of the session.

From Formation of the Union, 1750-1829 by Albert Bushnell Hart

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

In 1812, Louisiana was admitted as a Slave State, and Arkansas and Missouri were subsequently organized as territories without prohibition of slavery.

From The Relations of the Federal Government to Slavery Delivered at Fort Wayne, Ind., October 30th 1860 by Joseph K. (Joseph Ketchum) Edgerton