slave state

noun

|Updated on: 27 Jun 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

Rumors fueled rioting Racial tensions ran high in Cincinnati before the Civil War because of its proximity to Kentucky, a slave state.

— john kiesewetter, Cincinnati.com, "Civil unrest woven into city's history," 8 June 2018
Maryland was a slave state, of course, but New York?

— john kelly, Washington Post, "Naming rights — and wrongs: Montgomery students reveal uncomfortable truths," 21 May 2018
And Texas, a slave state, lost land that later became territories that could determine their own status, but Congress compensated Texas with $10 million to pay its debt.

— allan b. schwartz, Philly.com, "Medical Mystery: Did this president suffer a death by cherries?," 3 May 2018
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

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.