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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

Florida is admitted as the twenty-seventh state, a slave 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)

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 Hart, Albert Bushnell

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

He would probably have given them their freedom before his death, but for the fact, too evident, that freedom to a black man in a Slave State was not a boon.

From Famous Americans of Recent Times by Parton, James

Slavery already existed there, and no one doubted that if Texas came into the Union at all it must be as a Slave State.

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