slaveholding states
Pre-war Confederacy region
Slaveholding states were the U.S. states where slavery was legal before the Civil War, primarily in the South.
The term distinguished these states from free states where slavery had been abolished or never established.
Eleven slaveholding states seceded to form the Confederacy in 1860-61, though four slaveholding border states remained in the Union.
The Missouri Compromise attempted to balance the admission of slaveholding states and free states.
- Antebellum SouthPre-conflict Southern states
- Deep SouthSouthernmost American states
- Underground RailroadCovert abolitionist escape network
- Civil WarCountrymen fighting countrymen
- Jim CrowRacial separation laws
Mason-Dixon Line · Missouri Compromise · Emancipation Proclamation · King Cotton · cotton gin · cotton economy · plantation · sold down the river · Reconstruction Era · abolitionism
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