Slave state
A
slave state is a
U.S. State that had legal
slavery of
African-Americans. Slavery was a main cause of the
American Civil War and was abolished by the
Emancipation Proclamation of 1863 and the Thirteenth Amendment of 1865.
The 15 slave states at the time of the Civil War were
Alabama,
Arkansas,
Delaware,
Florida,
Georgia,
Kentucky,
Louisiana,
Maryland,
Mississippi,
Missouri,
North Carolina,
South Carolina,
Tennessee,
Texas, and
Virginia (including
West Virginia). (The District of Columbia also had slavery prior to the Civil War.) The last northern state to abolish slavery was
New Jersey in
1804, although the laws of that state retained slaves over a certain age as "apprentices for life" until the 13th Amendment.
All but five of these states seceded in
1860 and
1861 to form the
Confederate States of America;
Delaware,
Kentucky,
Maryland and
Missouri did not leave the
Union (see
border states). West Virginia joined the Union as a slave state in 1863 after seceding from Virginia. (The District of Columbia also remained part of the Union.)
Prior to the
American Revolution, all of the
British North American colonies had slavery, but the Revolutionary War gave impetus to a general antislavery sentiment. The
Northwest Territory, now known as the
Midwest, was organized under the
Northwest Ordinance with a prohibition on slavery in
1787.
Massachusetts accepted that its 1780 Constitution effectively abolished slavery, and several other northern statutes requiring gradual emancipation. In 1804,
New Jersey became the last state to embark on the course of gradual
emancipation, a process which had still not quite entirely eliminated slavery as late as
1860.
Northern slave states
| PA | MA | NH | CT | RI | NY | NJ | | European settlement | 1666 | 1638 | 1620 | 1623 | 1633 | 1636 | 1624 | 1620 |
| First record of slavery | c.1760? | 1639 | 1629? | 1645 | 1639 | 1652 | 1626 | 1626? |
| Official end of slavery | 1777 | 1780 | 1783 | 1783 | 1784 | 1784 | 1799 | 1804 |
| Actual end of slavery | 1777 | c.1845 | 1783 | c.1845? | 1848 | 1842 | 1827 | 1865 |
During the
War of 1812, British officers promised emancipation to slaves that would support their side. By the end of the War of 1812, the momentum for antislavery reform, state by state, appeared to run out of steam, with half of the States having already abolished slavery (Northeast), prohibited from the start (Midwest) or committed to eliminating slavery (New Jersey etc), and half committed to continuing the institution indefinitely (South). The potential for political conflict over slavery at a federal level led politicians to be concerned about the balance of power in the U.S. Senate, where each State was represented by two Senators. With an equal number of slave States and
free States, the Senate was equally divided. As the population of the free States began to outstrip the population of the slave States, leading to control of the
House of Representatives by free states, the Senate became the preoccupation of Slave state politicians, interested in maintaining a Congressional veto over federal policy in regard to slavery. As a result of this preoccupation, slave states and free states were often admitted into the Union in pairs, so as to maintain the existing Senate balance between slave and free.
The admission of Missouri and the Missouri Compromise
Controversy over whether
Missouri should be admitted as a slave State, resulted in the
Missouri Compromise of 1820, which specified that Louisiana Purchase territory north of latitude 36° 30', which described Missouri's southern boundary, would be organized as free States and territory south of that line would be reserved for organization as Slave states. As part of that Compromise, the admission of
Maine as a free state was secured to balance Missouri's admission as a slave State.
Status of Texas and the Mexican Cession states
The admission of
Texas and the acquisition of vast new western territories in the
Mexican-American War, further excited controversy. Although the settled portion of Texas was an area rich in cotton plantations and dependent on slavery, the territory acquired in the Mountain West did not seem hospitable to cotton or slavery. In 1850,
California was admitted as a free State, without an additional slave state as balance. (See
Compromise of 1850). This would have created a free State majority in the Senate, except for the fact that California agreeably sent one pro-slavery and one anti-slavery Senator to Washington. Thus, the admission of California increased the anxiety of pro-slavery politicians, but did not change the balance in the Senate.
The last battles
The difficulty of identifying any territory, which could be organized into additional Slave states stalled the process of opening the western territories to settlement, while Slave state politicians sought a solution. Efforts were made to acquire
Cuba, and even to annex
Nicaragua--both to be slave states. In 1854, the Missouri Compromise of 1820 was repealed, and an effort was initiated to organize
Kansas, as a Slave state. Kansas was paired with
Minnesota, for admission, but the admission of Kansas as a Slave state was blocked due to questions over the legitimacy of its slave state constitution. When the admission of Minnesota proceeded unimpeded in 1858, the balance in the Senate was lost, a loss to the slave states compounded by the subsequent admission of
Oregon in 1859.
Slave and free state pairs
Before 1812, the concern about balancing slave-states and free states was not profound. This is how the states lined up in 1812:
Following 1812, and until the
American Civil War, maintaining the balance of free and slave states within the federal legislature was considered of paramount importance if the Union was to be preserved, and for all intents and purpose states were admitted in pairs:
Maryland and the pro-Union government of
Missouri abolished slavery during the Civil War.
The
Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, ratified
December 6,
1865, abolished slavery throughout the United States, ending the distinction. Ratification of the 13th Amendment was a condition of the return of local rule to those states that had seceded.
*
Free state*
Border states (Civil War)*
Slavery in the North
