Example Sentences

Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.

Mainstream contemporary historians view the Constitution as a compromise between free and slaveholding states.

From Salon • May 14, 2026

But even aside from its profitability, many whites in the Antebellum South had come to see slaveholding not as a necessary evil, to be accepted apologetically, but as a positive moral good.

From The Wall Street Journal • Nov. 28, 2025

Born Samuel Langhorne Clemens in 1835, Twain grew up in the slaveholding community of Hannibal, Mo., a town he would immortalize in “Huckleberry Finn” and its prequel, “The Adventures of Tom Sawyer.”

From Los Angeles Times • May 9, 2025

Indeed, scholars in recent years have been reassessing Grant’s complicated legacy of battlefield cruelty and personal slaveholding, with some now arguing for him to be considered America’s first civil rights president.

From Seattle Times • Jan. 3, 2023

They said it showed how powerful the slaveholding South had become, that part of the United States Army should have been called out to assure the return of one miserable fugitive.

From "Harriet Tubman: Conductor on the Underground Railroad" by Ann Petry