border states
Edge territory nations
Border states refers to the slave-holding states that remained in the Union during the American Civil War—Delaware, Maryland, Kentucky, Missouri, and later West Virginia.
These states occupied the geographical and political boundary between North and South, their loyalties divided.
The term occasionally applies to any states along a significant political or cultural boundary: Border states will decide this election.
- KentuckyBluegrass State
- MissouriMidwestern state, major river
- DelawareFirst to join the Union
- MarylandMid-Atlantic U.S. state
- West VirginiaAppalachian state, capital Charleston
frontier · secession · Civil War · Confederacy · sectionalism · boundary · emancipation · wavering · Union · divided loyalties · buffer · slavery · cotton kingdom · popular sovereignty · borderlands · neutrality · compromise · contested
- Antebellum Americaantebellum era, Compromise of 1850, sectionalism, states' rights, Fugitive Slave Act
- Slavery EscapeUnderground Railroad, Harriet Tubman, Frederick Douglass, runaways, fugitives
- Southern HistoryDeep South, Antebellum, Old South, Dixie, Confederate
- American HistoryAmerican Revolution, Revolutionary War, colonial era, founding fathers, Declaration of Independence
- Presidential Electionsballot, ballot box, electoral votes, popular vote, voter turnout
- Abolitionismabolitionists, abolitionist movement, anti-slavery, antislavery, abolitionism
border statesDeep South
Southernmost American states
Confederate States of America · free states · slave states · Dixie
border stateslandlocked countries
States lacking coastal borders