Slave states and free states

In the United States before 1865, a slave state was a state in which the slave trade was legal, while a free state was one in which it was not. There were some enslaved persons in most free states in the 1840 census, and the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 specifically stated that an enslaved person remained enslaved even when she or he fled to a free state.

"Slave state" redirects here. It may also refer to the kingdoms of the Slave Coast in Africa.

An animation showing the free/slave status of U.S. states and territories, 1789–1861 (see separate yearly maps below). The American Civil War began in 1861. The 13th Amendment, effective December 1865, abolished slavery in the U.S.

Historically, in the 18th century, slavery existed in all the British colonies of North America. In 1776, slavery was legal throughout the Thirteen Colonies, when colonies started to abolish the legality of the practice. Pennsylvania abolished slavery in 1780, and about half the states abolished slavery during the Revolutionary War or in the first decades of the new country. Although not one of the Thirteen Colonies, Vermont declared its independence from Britain in 1777 and at the same time limited slavery, before being admitted as a state in 1791. Slavery became a very divisive issue. It was a major issue during the writing of the U.S. Constitution in 1787, and slavery was the primary cause of the American Civil War in 1861. Just before the Civil War, there were 19 free states and 15 slave states. During the war slavery was abolished in some of these jurisdictions, and the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, ratified in December of 1865, finally abolished slavery throughout the United States.

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Slavery

Early history

Slavery as a legal institution in eastern North America was established in Spanish colonies, French colonies, English colonies, and Dutch colonies during the 16th, 17th and 18th centuries. Slavery in the colonial US was established in each of the Thirteen Colonies. During British colonization, the number of people in slavery expanded, primarily drawn from the Atlantic slave trade.[1] Organized political and social movements to end slavery began in the mid-18th century.[2] The sentiments of the American Revolution (1775-1783) and the equality evoked by the Declaration of Independence stood in contrast to the status of most Black Americans. Despite this, thousands of Black Americans fought against the British in hopes of a new order. Thousands also joined the British army, encouraged by British offers of freedom in exchange for military service.[2] (See Black Patriot and Black Loyalist).

In the 1770s, Black people throughout New England began sending petitions to northern legislatures demanding freedom. Five of the Northern self-declared states adopted policies to at least gradually abolish slavery: Pennsylvania in 1780, New Hampshire and Massachusetts in 1783, and Connecticut and Rhode Island in 1784. The Republic of Vermont had limited slavery in 1777, while it was still independent before it joined the United States as the 14th state in 1791. These state jurisdictions thus enacted the first abolition laws in the Americas.[3] By 1804 (including New York (1799) and New Jersey (1804)), all of the Northern states had abolished slavery or set measures in place to gradually abolish it,[2][4] although there were still hundreds of ex-slaves working without pay as indentured servants in Northern states as late as the 1840 census (see Slavery in the United States#Abolitionism in the North).

In the South, Kentucky was created a slave state from Virginia (1792), and Tennessee was created a slave state from North Carolina (1796). By 1804, before the creation of new states from the federal western territories, the number of slave and free states was 8 each. By the time of Missouri Compromise of 1820, the dividing line between the slave and free states was called the Mason-Dixon line (between Maryland and Pennsylvania), with its westward extension being the Ohio River.

The 1787 Constitutional Convention debated slavery, and for a time slavery was a major impediment to passage of the new constitution. As a compromise, the institution was acknowledged though never mentioned directly in the constitution, as in the case of the Fugitive Slave Clause. The Constitution prohibited Congress from abolishing the importation of slaves, but in a compromise, the prohibition would be lifted in twenty years. Legislation ending it passed easily in 1807, effective in 1808. However, the ban on importation spurred an expansion in the domestic (internal) trade in slaves, which remained legal until slavery was banned entirely in 1865 by constitutional amendment.

The Missouri Compromise of 1820, trading the admission of Missouri (a slave state) for Maine (a free state), drew a line extending west from Missouri's southern border, which was intended to divide any new territory into slave (south of the line) and free (north of the line).

New territories
With the statehood of Arkansas in 1836, the number of slave states grew to 13, but the statehood of Michigan in 1837 maintained the balance between slave and free states.

The Northwest Ordinance of 1787, passed just before the U.S. Constitution was ratified, had prohibited slavery in the federal Northwest Territory. The southern boundary of the territory was the Ohio River, which was regarded as a westward extension of the Mason-Dixon line. The territory was generally settled by New Englanders and American Revolutionary War veterans granted land there. The 6 states created from the territory were all free states: Ohio (1803), Indiana (1816), Illinois (1818), Michigan (1837), Wisconsin (1848), and Minnesota (1858).[5]

By 1815, 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, and half committed to continuing the institution indefinitely (South).

By 1845, with Texas and Florida in the Union as slave states, slave states once again outnumbered the free states for a year until Iowa was admitted as a free state in 1846.

The potential for political conflict over slavery at a federal level made politicians concerned about the balance of power in the Senate, where each State was represented by two Senators. With an equal number of slave states and free states, the Senate was equally divided on issues important to the South. 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 and other issues important to the South. As a result of this preoccupation, slave states and free states were often admitted into the Union in opposite pairs to maintain the existing Senate balance between slave and free states.

By 1858, 17 free states, which included California (1850), and Minnesota (1858), outnumbered the 15 slave states.

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 most of 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 the compromise, the admission of Maine (1820) as a free state was enabled by Missouri's compromise to join the union as a slave state (1820).[6]

Texas and the Mexican Cession
Further information: Wilmot Proviso

The admission of Texas (1845) and the acquisition of the vast new Mexican Cession territories (1848), after the Mexican–American War, created further North-South conflict. Although the settled portion of Texas was an area rich in cotton plantations and dependent on slave labor, the territory acquired in the Mountain West did not seem hospitable to cotton or slavery.[7]

As part of the Compromise of 1850, California was admitted as a free state without a slave state pair; California's admission also meant there would be no slave state on the Pacific Ocean. To avoid creating a free state majority in the Senate, California agreed to send one pro-slavery and one anti-slavery senator to Congress.[8]

Last battles

The difficulty of identifying territory that could be organized into additional slave states stalled the process of opening the western territories to settlement, while slave state politicians sought a solution, with efforts being made to acquire Cuba (see: Ostend Manifesto, 1852) and to annex Nicaragua (see: Walker affair, 1856–57), both to be slave states.

In 1854, the Missouri Compromise of 1820 was superseded by the Kansas–Nebraska Act, which allowed white male settlers in the new territories to determine through popular sovereignty whether they would allow slavery within each territory. The result was that pro- and anti-slavery elements flooded into Kansas with the goal of voting slavery up or down, leading to bloody fighting.[9] An effort was initiated to organize Kansas for admission as a slave state, paired with Minnesota, but the admission of Kansas as a slave state was blocked because of questions over the legitimacy of its slave state constitution. Anti-slavery proponents during the "Bleeding Kansas" era of the 1850s were called Free-Staters and Free-Soilers, and fought against Border Ruffians to combat pro-slavery supporters. The animosity escalated throughout the 1850s, culminating in numerous skirmishes and devastation on both sides of the border. Nevertheless, Free-Staters endured leading to the approval of Kansas to join the Union as a free state in 1861.

When the admission of Minnesota proceeded unimpeded in 1858, the balance in the Senate was lost; a loss that was compounded by the subsequent admission of Oregon as a free state in 1859.

Slave and free state pairs

Before 1812, the concern about balancing slave-states and free states was not deeply considered. The following table shows the slave and free states as of 1812. The year column is the year the state ratified the US Constitution or was admitted to the Union:[10]

Slave statesYearFree statesYear
Delaware1787New Jersey
(Slave until 1804)		1787
Georgia1788Pennsylvania1787
Maryland1788Connecticut1788
South Carolina1788Massachusetts1788
Virginia1788New Hampshire1788
North Carolina1789New York
(Slave until 1799)		1788
Kentucky1792Rhode Island1790
Tennessee1796Vermont1791
Louisiana1812Ohio1803
By the eve of the Civil War in mid-1861, with the addition of Oregon (1859) and Kansas (1861), the number of free states had grown to 19 while the number of slave states remained at 15.

From 1812 through 1850, maintaining the balance of free and slave state votes in the Senate was considered of paramount importance if the Union were to be preserved, and states were typically admitted in pairs:

Slave statesYearFree statesYear
Mississippi1817Indiana1816
Alabama1819Illinois1818
Missouri1821Maine1820
Arkansas1836Michigan1837
Florida1845Iowa1846
Texas1845Wisconsin1848

The balance was maintained until 1850:

Slave statesYearFree statesYear
California1850
Minnesota1858
Oregon1859
Kansas1861
Division of states during the Civil War. Blue represents Union states, including those admitted during the war; light blue represents border states; red represents Confederate states. Unshaded areas were not states before or during the Civil War.

The Civil War (1861–1865) disrupted and eventually ended slavery:

Slave stateYearFree stateYear
West Virginia
(gradual abolition plan)		1863Nevada1864

West Virginia

During the Civil War, a Unionist government in Wheeling, Virginia, presented a statehood bill to Congress in order to create a new state from 48 counties in western Virginia. The new state would eventually incorporate 50 counties. The issue of slavery in the new state delayed approval of the bill. In the Senate Charles Sumner objected to the admission of a new slave state, while Benjamin Wade defended statehood as long as a gradual emancipation clause would be included in the new state constitution.[11] Two senators represented the Unionist Virginia government, John S. Carlile and Waitman T. Willey. Senator Carlile objected that Congress had no right to impose emancipation on West Virginia, while Willey proposed a compromise amendment to the state constitution for gradual abolition. Sumner attempted to add his own amendment to the bill, which was defeated, and the statehood bill passed both houses of Congress with the addition of what became known as the Willey Amendment. President Lincoln signed the bill on December 31, 1862. Voters in western Virginia approved the Willey Amendment on March 26, 1863.[12]

President Lincoln had issued the Emancipation Proclamation on January 1, 1863, which exempted from emancipation the border states (four slave states loyal to the Union) as well as some territories occupied by Union forces within Confederate states. Two additional counties were added to West Virginia in late 1863, Berkeley and Jefferson. The slaves in Berkeley were also under exemption but not those in Jefferson County. As of the census of 1860, the 49 exempted counties held some 6000 slaves over 21 years of age who would not have been emancipated, about 40% of the total slave population.[13] The terms of the Willey Amendment only freed children, at birth or as they came of age, and prohibited the importation of slaves.[14]

Abolition of slavery in the various states of the US over time:
  Abolition of slavery during or shortly after the American Revolution
  The Northwest Ordinance (slavery excluded), 1787
  Gradual emancipation in New York (starting 1799) and New Jersey (starting 1804)
  The Missouri Compromise, 1821
  Effective abolition of slavery by Mexican or joint US/British authority
  Exclusion of slavery by Congressional action, 1861
  Abolition of slavery by Congressional action, 1862
  Emancipation Proclamation as originally issued, January 1, 1863
  Subsequent operation of the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863
  Abolition of slavery by state action during the Civil War
  Operation of the Emancipation Proclamation in 1864
  Operation of the Emancipation Proclamation in 1865
  Thirteenth Amendment to the US constitution, December 18, 1865
  Territory incorporated into the US after the passage of the Thirteenth Amendment

West Virginia became the 35th state on June 20, 1863, and the last slave state admitted to the Union.[15][16][17] Eighteen months later, the West Virginia legislature completely abolished slavery,[18] and also ratified the 13th Amendment on February 3, 1865.

Washington D.C.

In the District of Columbia, formed with land from two slave states, Maryland and Virginia, the trade was abolished by the Compromise of 1850. So as to avoid losing the profitable slave trading businesses in Alexandria (one was Franklin and Armfield), Alexandria County, D.C., requested that it be returned to Virginia, where the slave trade was legal; this took place in 1847. Slavery in the District of Columbia remained legal until 1862, when the walkout of all the Southern legislators permitted those remaining to pass the ban, which abolitionists had been seeking for decades.

End of slavery

At the start of the Civil War, there were 34 states in the United States, 15 of which were slave states. Eleven of these slave states, after conventions devoted to the topic, issued declarations of secession from the United States and created the Confederate States of America and were represented in the Confederate Congress.[19][20] The slave states that stayed in the Union, Maryland, Missouri, Delaware, and Kentucky (called border states) remained seated in the U.S. Congress. By the time the Emancipation Proclamation was issued in 1863, Tennessee was already under Union control. Accordingly, the Proclamation applied only to the 10 remaining Confederate states. During the war, abolition of slavery was required by President Abraham Lincoln for readmission of Confederate states.[21]

The U.S. Congress, after the departure of the powerful Southern contingent in 1861, was generally abolitionist: In a plan endorsed by Abraham Lincoln, slavery in the District of Columbia, which the Southern contingent had protected, was abolished in 1862.[22] The Union-occupied territories of Louisiana[23] and eastern Virginia,[24] which had been exempted from the Emancipation Proclamation, also abolished slavery through respective state constitutions drafted in 1864. The State of Arkansas, which was not exempt but which in part came under Union control by 1864, adopted an anti-slavery constitution in March of that year.[25] The border states of Maryland (November 1864)[26] and Missouri (January 1865),[27] the Union-occupied Confederate state, Tennessee (January 1865),[28] and the new state of West Virginia, separated from Virginia in 1863 over the issue of slavery,[29] abolished slavery in February 1865, prior to the end of the Civil War. However, slavery persisted in Delaware,[30] Kentucky,[31] and New Jersey[32][33] and on the books in 7 of 11 of the former Confederate states, until the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution abolished slavery throughout the United States on December 6, 1865, ending the distinction between slave and free states.[34]

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See also

References
  1. Betty Wood, Slavery in Colonial America, 1619–1776 (2013) excerpt and text search
  2. Painter, Nell Irvin (2006). Creating Black Americans: African-American History and Its Meanings, 1619 to the Present. Oxford University Press. pp. 70–72. ISBN 978-0195137569.
  3. Foner, Eric (2010). The Fiery Trial: Abraham Lincoln and American Slavery. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, Inc. p. 14. ISBN 978-0-19-513755-2.
  4. Wilson, Black Codes (1965), p. 15. "By 1775, inspired by those 'self-evident' truths which were to be expressed by the Declaration of Independence, a considerable number of colonists felt that the time had come to end slavery and give the free Negroes some fruits of liberty. This sentiment, added to economic considerations, led to the immediate or gradual abolition of slavery in six Northern states, while there was a swelling flood of private manumissions in the South. Little actual gain was made by the free Negro even in this period, and by the turn of the century the downward trend had begun again. Thereafter the only important change in that trend before the Civil War was that after 1831 the decline in the status of the free Negro became more precipitate."
  5. "LIBERTY! . Northwest Ordinance". PBS. Retrieved July 5, 2020.
  6. Ken S. Mueller, "Wolf by the Ears: The Missouri Crisis, 1819–1821 by John R. Van Atta." Journal of the Early Republic 37.1 (2017): 173-175 online.
  7. Michael A. Morrison, “Westward the Curse of Empire: Texas Annexation and the American Whig Party.” Journal of the Early Republic 10#2 (1990): 221-249 online
  8. Michael E. Woods, "The Compromise of 1850 and the Search for a Usable Past." Journal of the Civil War Era 9.3 (2019): 438-456.
  9. Nicole Etcheson. Bleeding Kansas: Contested Liberty in the Civil War Era (2006). ch 1.
  10. Leonard L. Richards, The Slave Power: The Free North and Southern Domination, 1780--1860 (LSU Press, 2000).
  11. James Oakes, Freedom National: The Destruction of Slavery in the United States, 1861–1865, W.W. Norton, 2012, pgs. 296-97
  12. "West Virginians Approve the Willey Amendment". wvculture.org. Retrieved December 7, 2015.
  13. "University of Virginia Library". virginia.edu. Retrieved December 7, 2015.
  14. "Willey Amendment". wvculture.org. Retrieved December 7, 2015.
  15. Alton Hornsby, Jr.,Black America, A State-by-State Historical Encyclopedia, Greenwood, 2011, vol. 2, pg. 922
  16. "West Virginia Statehood". wvculture.org. Archived from the original on March 7, 2007. Retrieved December 7, 2015.
  17. "African-Americans in West Virginia". wvculture.org. Archived from the original on December 31, 2013. Retrieved December 7, 2015.
  18. "On This Day in West Virginia History – February 3". wvculture.org. Archived from the original on October 8, 2014. Retrieved December 7, 2015.
  19. Martis, Kenneth C. (1994). The Historical Atlas of the Congresses of the Confederate States of America, 1861–1865. Simon & Schuster. p. 7. ISBN 0-02-920170-5.
  20. Only Virginia, Tennessee and Texas held referendums to ratify their Fire-Eater declarations of secession, and Virginia's excluded Unionist county votes and included Confederate troops in Richmond voting as regiments viva voce.Dabney, Virginius. (1983). Virginia: The New Dominion, a History from 1607 to the Present. Doubleday. p. 296. ISBN 9780813910154.
  21. Guelzo, Allen C. (2018). Reconstruction : a concise history. Oxford University Press. p. 4. ISBN 978-0-19-086569-6. OCLC 999309004.
  22. American Memory "Abolition in the District of Columbia", Today in History, Library of Congress, viewed December 15, 2014. On April 16, 1862, Lincoln signed a Congressional act abolishing slavery in the District of Columbia with compensation for slave owners, five months before the victory at Antietam led to the Emancipation Proclamation.
  23. https://www.crt.state.la.us/louisiana-state-museum/online-exhibits/the-cabildo/reconstruction-a-state-divided/index
  24. http://edu.lva.virginia.gov/online_classroom/shaping_the_constitution/doc/convention
  25. "Freedmen and Southern Society Project: Chronology of Emancipation". www.freedmen.umd.edu. University of Maryland. Retrieved November 26, 2019.
  26. "Archives of Maryland Historical List: Constitutional Convention, 1864". November 1, 1864. Retrieved November 18, 2012.
  27. "Missouri abolishes slavery". January 11, 1865. Archived from the original on April 25, 2012. Retrieved November 18, 2012.
  28. "Tennessee State Convention: Slavery Declared Forever Abolished". The New York Times. January 14, 1865. Retrieved November 18, 2012.
  29. "On this day: 1865-FEB-03". Retrieved November 18, 2012.
  30. "Slavery in Delaware". Slavenorth.com. Retrieved January 21, 2017.
  31. Harrison, Lowell H.; Klotter, James C. (1997). A New History of Kentucky. Lexington, Ky.: University Press of Kentucky. p. 180. ISBN 0813126215. Retrieved October 16, 2016.
  32. "Slavery in the Middle States (NJ, NY, PA)". Encyclopedia.com. July 16, 2020. Retrieved June 19, 2020.
  33. Smith, Geneva. "Legislating Slavery in New Jersey". Princeton & Slavery. Retrieved June 19, 2020.
  34. Kocher, Greg (February 23, 2013). "Kentucky supported Lincoln's efforts to abolish slavery — 111 years late | Lexington Herald-Leader". Kentucky.com. Archived from the original on July 2, 2018. Retrieved January 21, 2017.

Further reading


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