Slave and free states
In the history of the United States of America, a slave state was a U.S. state in which the practice of slavery was legal at a particular point of time, and a free state was one in which slavery was prohibited or being legally phased out at that point of time. Slavery was a divisive issue and was one of the primary causes of the American Civil War. The Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, ratified in 1865, abolished slavery throughout the United States, and the distinction ended.
Contents
Early history[edit]
Slavery was legal and practiced in each of the Thirteen Colonies.[1] Organized political and social movements to end slavery began in the mid-18th century.[2] The sentiments of the American Revolution and the equality evoked by the Declaration of Independence rallied many black Americans toward the revolutionary cause and their own hopes of emancipation. Others joined the British army, encouraged by British promises of freedom in exchange for military service. Free black men also fought in the Revolution on both sides[2] (see Black Patriot and Black Loyalist). After the British lost the war, all promises made by them to the black soldiers who joined them as to their emancipation ceased to be of any effect, with slaves emancipated by British edict reverting to slave status.
In the 1770s, blacks throughout New England began sending petitions to northern legislatures demanding freedom. At the Constitutional Convention many slavery issues were debated 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. By 1789, five of the Northern states had adopted policies to at least gradually abolish slavery: Pennsylvania (1780), New Hampshire and Massachusetts (1783), Connecticut and Rhode Island (1784). Vermont abolished slavery in 1777, while it was still independent, and when it joined the United States as the 14th state in 1791 it was the first state to join untainted by slavery. These state jurisdictions thus enacted the first abolition laws in the entire "New World".[3] By 1804 (including, New York (1799), New Jersey (1804)), all of the northern states had abolished slavery or set measures in place to gradually reduce it.[2][4]
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 eight each. In popular usage, the geographic divide between the slave and free states was called the Mason–Dixon line.
New territories[edit]
 |
This article includes a list of references, but its sources remain unclear because it has insufficient inline citations. (March 2015) (Learn how and when to remove this template message) |
The Northwest Ordinance of 1787, passed just before the U.S. Constitution was ratified, 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 states created from the territory – Ohio (1803), Indiana (1816), Illinois (1818), Michigan (1837), Iowa (1846), Wisconsin (1848), and Minnesota (1858) – were all free states.
During the War of 1812, the British accepted as free all slaves who came into their hands, with no conditions as to military service such as had been made in Dunmore's Proclamation in the Revolutionary War. 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, and half committed to continuing the institution indefinitely (South).
The potential for political conflict over slavery at a federal level made politicians concerned about the balance of power in the United States 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 pairs to maintain the existing Senate balance between slave and free states.
Missouri Compromise[edit]
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 secured to balance Missouri's admission as a slave state (1820).
Texas and the Mexican Cession[edit]
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 slavery, the territory acquired in the Mountain West did not seem hospitable to cotton or slavery.
As part of the Compromise of 1850, California was admitted as a free state (1850), without a slave state pair. To avoid creating a free state majority in the Senate, California agreed to send one pro-slavery and one anti-slavery senator to Congress.[citation needed]
Last battles[edit]
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.[5] 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 settlers in "Bleeding Kansas" in the 1850s were called Free-Soilers, because they fought (successfully) to include Kansas in 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 in 1859.
Slave and free state pairs[edit]
Before 1812, the concern about balancing slave-states and free states was not profound. This is how the states lined up in 1812. The year column is the year the state ratified the US Constitution or was admitted to the Union:
| Slave States | Year | Free States | Year |
|---|---|---|---|
| Delaware | 1787 | New Jersey (Slave until 1804) |
1787 |
| Georgia | 1788 | Pennsylvania | 1787 |
| Maryland | 1788 | Connecticut | 1788 |
| South Carolina | 1788 | Massachusetts | 1788 |
| Virginia | 1788 | New Hampshire | 1788 |
| North Carolina | 1789 | New York (Slave until 1799) |
1788 |
| Kentucky | 1792 | Rhode Island | 1790 |
| Tennessee | 1796 | Vermont | 1791 |
| Louisiana | 1812 | Ohio | 1803 |
After 1812, and until 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 States | Year | Free States | Year |
|---|---|---|---|
| Mississippi | 1817 | Indiana | 1816 |
| Alabama | 1819 | Illinois | 1818 |
| Missouri | 1821 | Maine | 1820 |
| Arkansas | 1836 | Michigan | 1837 |
| Florida | 1845 | Iowa | 1846 |
| Texas | 1845 | Wisconsin | 1848 |
The balance was maintained until 1850:
| Slave States | Year | Free States | Year |
|---|---|---|---|
| California (One pro-slavery Senator) |
1850 | ||
| Minnesota | 1858 | ||
| Oregon | 1859 | ||
| Kansas | 1861 |
The Civil War (1861-1865) disrupted and eventually ended slavery:
| Slave State | Year | Free State | Year |
|---|---|---|---|
| West Virginia (gradual abolition plan) |
1863 | Nevada | 1864 |
West Virginia[edit]
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.[6] 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.[7]
President Lincoln had issued the Emancipation Proclamation on January 1, 1863, which exempted the slaves in West Virginia from emancipation. 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.[8] The terms of the Willey Amendment only freed children, at birth or as they came of age, and prohibited the importation of slaves.[9]
West Virginia became the 35th state on June 20, 1863, and the last slave state admitted to the Union.[10][11][12] Eighteen months later, the West Virginia legislature completely abolished slavery,[13] and also ratified the 13th Amendment on February 3, 1865.
End of slavery[edit]
At the start of the Civil War, there were 34 states in the United States, 15 of which were slave states. 11 of these slave states declared their secession from the United States to form the Confederacy. The slave states that stayed in the Union were Maryland, Missouri, Delaware, and Kentucky, and were referred to as the border states. By the time the Emancipation Proclamation was made in 1863 Tennessee was already in Union control. Accordingly, the Proclamation applied only to the 10 remaining Confederate states. Abolition of slavery also became a condition of the return of local rule in those states that had declared their secession.
The border states of Maryland (1864),[14] Missouri (1865),[15] one of the Confederate states, Tennessee (1865),[16] and the new state of West Virginia (1865),[17] abolished slavery before the end of the Civil War. In the District of Columbia, slavery was abolished in 1862.[18] However, slavery persisted in Delaware,[19] Kentucky,[20] and 10 of the 11 of the former Confederate states, until the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution abolished slavery throughout the United States on December 18, 1865, ending the distinction between slave and free states.
See also[edit]
- Border states (American Civil War)
- Confederate States of America
- Golden Circle (proposed country)
- Slavery in the colonial United States
- Slavery in the United States
- Wilmot Proviso
References[edit]
- ^ Betty Wood, Slavery in Colonial America, 1619–1776 (2013) excerpt and text search
- ^ a b c Painter, Nell Irvin (2006). Creating Black Americans: African-American History and Its Meanings, 1619 to the Present. Oxford University Press. pp. 70–72.
- ^ Foner, Eric (2010). The Fiery Trial: Abraham Lincoln and American Slavery. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, Inc. p. 14.
- ^ 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."
- ^ Nicole Etcheson, Bleeding Kansas: Contested Liberty in the Civil War Era (2006) ch 1
- ^ James Oakes, Freedom National: The Destruction of Slavery in the United States, 1861-1865, W.W. Norton, 2012, pgs. 296-97
- ^ "West Virginians Approve the Willey Amendment". wvculture.org. Retrieved December 7, 2015.
- ^ "University of Virginia Library". virginia.edu. Retrieved December 7, 2015.
- ^ "Willey Amendment". wvculture.org. Retrieved December 7, 2015.
- ^ Alton Hornsby, Jr.,Black America, A State-by-State Historical Encyclopedia, Greenwood, 2011, vol. 2, pg. 922
- ^ "West Virginia Statehood". wvculture.org. Retrieved December 7, 2015.
- ^ "African-Americans in West Virginia". wvculture.org. Retrieved December 7, 2015.
- ^ "On This Day in West Virginia History - February 3". wvculture.org. Retrieved December 7, 2015.
- ^ "Archives of Maryland Historical List: Constitutional Convention, 1864". November 1, 1864. Retrieved November 18, 2012.
- ^ "Missouri abolishes slavery". January 11, 1865. Retrieved November 18, 2012.
- ^ "Tennessee State Convention: Slavery Declared Forever Abolished". The New York Times. January 14, 1865. Retrieved November 18, 2012.
- ^ "On this day: 1865-FEB-03". Retrieved November 18, 2012.
- ^ 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.
- ^ "Slavery in Delaware". Retrieved November 18, 2012.
- ^ Lowell Hayes Harrison and James C. Klotter (1997). A new history of Kentucky. p. 180. In 1866, Kentucky refused to ratify the 13th Amendment. It did ratify it in 1976.
