slave state

noun

Updated on: 5 Apr 2018

Definition of slave state

1 : a state of the U.S. in which slavery was legal until the Civil War

2 : a nation subjected to totalitarian rule

See slave state defined for English-language learners

Recent Examples of slave state from the Web

These states in the middle – caught on the line that separated slave states from free before the Civil War – were not staunchly abolitionist, like some of their more northern neighbors.

— hannah sparling, Cincinnati.com, "Neo-Nazis have set up shop here. This is why.," 21 Mar. 2018
In the calm and reasoned rhetoric that marked the period leading up to the Civil War, this became known in the slave states as the Tariff Of Abominations.

— charles p. pierce, Esquire, "Trump's Tariff Decision May Be His Most Complicated Bungle Yet," 8 Mar. 2018
The current President of The United States wants immigrants who will preserve monuments to treasonous Confederate rebels who sought to preserve slave states and create more of them.

— jeff darcy, cleveland.com, "False missile alert human errors: Darcy cartoon," 17 Jan. 2018
Especially abhorrent to legislators from the old slave states was the prospect of persons who had been chattel property liberated from labor to become theatergoers.

— amy dru stanley, Slate Magazine, "The 19th-century fight over theatergoing that revolutionized human rights.," 21 Dec. 2017
In slave states like Kentucky, home to approximately 40,000 enslaved laborers around McDowell’s time, many of these experimental surgeries were performed on slaves.

— kat eschner, Smithsonian, "This American Doctor Pioneered Abdominal Surgery By Operating on Enslaved Women," 19 Dec. 2017
By 1860, cotton was $192 million of America’s $316 million in exports, and slave states produced 60 percent of the cotton for the entire world.

— michael harriot, The Root, "Patriotism Is for Black People," 27 Sep. 2017
The House, dominated by free states, wanted Missouri to be free; the Senate, split between free and slave states, balked.

— richard brookhiser, WSJ, "John Quincy Adams on Paper," 28 July 2017
Not least of all, gradual emancipation in Missouri would upset the balance of free to slave states, threatening planter power in the long-term at the level of Congress and the Electoral College.

— jamelle bouie, Slate Magazine, "The Danger of Trump’s Civil War Ignorance," 2 May 2017

These example sentences are selected automatically from various online news sources to reflect current usage of the word 'slave state.' Views expressed in the examples do not represent the opinion of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback.