Early history , and with federal jurisdiction in the territories asserted by Congress, particularly with the
Northwest Ordinance of 1787.
Slavery was established as a legal institution in each of the
Thirteen Colonies, starting in 1619 with the arrival of
"twenty and odd" enslaved Africans in
Virginia. Although
indigenous peoples were also sold into slavery, the vast majority of the enslaved population consisted of Africans brought to the Americas via the
Atlantic slave trade. Due to a lower prevalence of
tropical diseases and better
treatment, the enslaved population in the colonies had a higher life expectancy than in the
West Indies and South America, leading to a rapid increase in population in the decades prior to the
American Revolution. Organized political and social movements to
abolish slavery began in the mid-18th century. The sentiments of the American Revolution and the promise of equality evoked by the
Declaration of Independence stood in contrast to the status of most Black people, either
free or enslaved, in the colonies. Despite this, thousands of Black Americans
fought for the
Patriot cause for a combination of reasons. Thousands also
joined the British, encouraged by offers of freedom such as the
Philipsburg Proclamation. By 1804 (including New York in 1799 and New Jersey in 1804), all the Northern states had abolished slavery or set measures in place to gradually abolish it, although there were still hundreds of ex-slaves working without pay as
indentured servants in Northern states as late as the 1840 census (see Slavery in the United States#Abolitionism in the North). In the South,
Kentucky was created as a slave state from Virginia (1792), and
Tennessee was created as 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. By the time of
Missouri Compromise of 1820, the dividing line between the slave and free states was called the
Mason-Dixon line (between
Maryland and Pennsylvania), with its westward extension being the
Ohio River. The 1787
Constitutional Convention debated slavery, and for a time slavery was a major impediment to passage of the
new constitution. As a compromise, slavery was acknowledged but never mentioned explicitly in the Constitution. The
Fugitive Slave Clause, Article 4, section 2, clause 3, for example, refers to a "Person held to Service or Labor." In addition,
Article 1, section 9, clause 1 of the Constitution prohibited Congress from abolishing the importation of slaves, but in a compromise, the prohibition could be lifted by Congress in 20 years, and slaves were referred to as "Persons." The
Act Prohibiting Importation of Slaves passed easily in 1807 and took effect on January 1, 1808. However, the ban on importation spurred an expansion in the
domestic slave trade, which remained legal until slavery was banned entirely in 1865 by the
13th Amendment. of 1820, trading the admission of Missouri (a slave state) for Maine (a free state), drew a line extending west from Missouri's southern border, which was intended to divide any new territory into slave (south of the line) and free (north of the line). In the late 1850s, several Southern states launched an unsuccessful campaign to resume the international slave trade, in order to restock their slave populations, but this met with strong opposition. However, a large natural increase in the slave population occurred throughout the late 18th and 19th centuries, while some illegal smuggling of African slaves continued via
Spanish Cuba. Another compromise in the Constitution was the
Three-Fifths Clause, by which slave states acquired representation in the
House of Representatives and
Electoral College equivalent to 60 percent of their
disenfranchised slave populations. Slave states had wanted 100 percent of their slaves to be counted, whereas Northern states argued that none should be, because, as
Elbridge Gerry said, why should "blacks, who were property in the South", count toward representation "any more than the Cattle & horses of the North"?
New Territories The
Northwest Ordinance of 1787, passed just before the
U.S. Constitution was ratified, had 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 who were granted land there. The 6 states created from the territory were all free states:
Ohio (1803),
Indiana (1816),
Illinois (1818),
Michigan (1837),
Wisconsin (1848), and
Minnesota (1858). By 1815, the momentum for anti-slavery reform appeared to run out of steam, with half the states having already abolished slavery (
Northeast), prohibited it from the start (
Midwest), or committed to eliminating it, and half committed to continuing the institution indefinitely (
South). The potential for political conflict over slavery at the federal level made politicians concerned about the balance of power in the
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 with 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 opposite pairs to maintain the existing Senate balance between slave and free states.
Missouri Compromise Controversy over whether
Missouri should be admitted as a slave state resulted in the
Missouri Compromise of 1820, which specified that territory acquired in the
Louisiana Purchase north of latitude 36° 30', which described most of Missouri's southern border, would, except for Missouri, become free states, and territory south of that line would become slave states. As part of the compromise,
Maine, on August 19, 1821, was admitted as a free state.
Texas and the Mexican Cession The
admission of Texas as a slave state in 1845 and the acquisition of the vast new
Mexican Cession territories in 1848, after the
Mexican–American War, created further north–south conflict. Anglo-American settlers brought slaves to
Mexican Texas, and though
Mexico outlawed slavery in most of its territories in 1829, Texas was granted an exemption. The settled portion of Texas was an area rich in
cotton plantations and dependent on slave labor, while 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. After Oregon was admitted as a free state in 1859, there were no slave states on the Pacific coast. To avoid creating a free state majority in the Senate, California was forced to send one pro-slavery and one anti-slavery senator to Congress.
Last battles The difficulty of identifying territory that could be organized into additional slave states stalled the process of opening the western territories to settlement. Slave-state politicians made efforts to annex
Cuba (see:
Lopez Expedition and
Ostend Manifesto, 1852) and
Nicaragua (see:
Filibuster War, 1856–57), with intentions to create new slave states. Parts of
Northern Mexico were also coveted, with Senator
Albert Brown declaring "I want
Tamaulipas,
Potosi, and one or two other
Mexican States; and I want them all for the same reason – for the plantation and spreading of slavery".
Kansas 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, by vote (
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. 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 its proposed pro-slavery constitution (the
Lecompton Constitution) had not been approved in an honest election. Anti-slavery proponents during the "
Bleeding Kansas" period of the later 1850s were called
Free-Staters and
Free-Soilers and fought against pro-slavery
Border Ruffians from Missouri. The animosity escalated throughout the 1850s, culminating in numerous skirmishes and devastation on both sides of the question. Nevertheless, the North prevented Kansas Territory from becoming a slave state, and when Southern members of Congress departed
en masse in early 1861, Kansas was immediately admitted to the Union as a free state. When the admission of Minnesota proceeded unimpeded in 1858, the balance in the Senate ended; this was compounded by the subsequent admission of
Oregon as a free state in 1859.
Slave and free state pairs The following table shows the balance between slave and free states that began in 1812. The Statehood columns provide the year the state either ratified the U.S. Constitution or was
admitted to the Union. The date ranges in the Abolition column for Free States indicate when gradual abolition laws were adopted and when slavery finally ended, except for states where slavery was outlawed in a specific year. From 1812 through 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: California was admitted as a free state in 1850 without an accompanying slave state, though certain concessions were made to the slave states as part of the
Compromise of 1850. Three more free states were admitted in the final years before the Civil War, disrupting the balance that the slave states had tried to maintain.
Civil War states, including those admitted during the war; light blue represents border states, some of which had both Confederate and Unionist governments; red represents
Confederate states. Unshaded areas were not states before or during the Civil War. The
American Civil War (1861–1865) disrupted and eventually ended slavery. Eleven slave states joined the
Confederacy, while the
border states of Delaware, Maryland, Kentucky, and Missouriall slave statesremained in the Union, although Kentucky and Missouri also had competing Confederate state governments. In 1863 western Virginia, much of which had remained loyal to the Union, was admitted as the new state of
West Virginia with a commitment to gradual emancipation. The following year
Nevada, a free state in the West, was also admitted.
Special cases West Virginia During the Civil War, a
Unionist government in
Wheeling, Virginia, presented a statehood bill to Congress 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. 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. On January 1, 1863, President Lincoln had issued the
Emancipation Proclamation, which exempted from emancipation the
border states (four slave states loyal to the
Union) as well as some territories occupied by Union forces within Confederate states. Two additional counties were added to West Virginia in late 1863,
Berkeley and
Jefferson. The slaves in Berkeley were not emancipated, but those in Jefferson County were. 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 percent of the total slave population. The Willey Amendment freed only children, at birth or as they came of age, and prohibited the importation of slaves. West Virginia became the 35th state on June 20, 1863, and the last slave state admitted to the Union. Eighteen months later, the West Virginia legislature completely abolished slavery, and also ratified the
13th Amendment on February 3, 1865.
Washington D.C. In the
District of Columbia, formed with land from two slave states, Maryland and Virginia, the slave trade was abolished by the
Compromise of 1850. So as to avoid losing the profitable slave-trading businesses in Alexandria (one was
Franklin and Armfield), Alexandria County, D.C., requested that it be returned to Virginia, where the slave trade was legal; this took place in 1847. Slavery in the District of Columbia remained legal until 1862, when, over strong opposition from slaveholding residents, Congress passed the
DC Compensated Emancipation Act. "Some enslavers refused to acknowledge the law and attempted to keep enslaved people in bondage illegally. Congress passed a supplemental law in July 1862 that allowed these victims to file petitions on their own behalf."
Utah Territory Although it did not become a state until 1896, as an
organized territory, Utah legalized slavery under the 1852 territorial
Act in Relation to Service and similar
Act for the Relief of Indian Slaves and Prisoners.
Brigham Young and his group of
Mormon pioneers had arrived in Utah in 1847, during the
Mexican–American War, when
Utah Territory was Mexican territory. They ignored the Mexican ban on slavery.
They viewed slavery as consistent with the Mormon view on Black people. On June 19, 1862, fulfilling a part of his
1860 campaign platform, President Lincoln signed a
law ending slavery in Utah Territory and all other territories.
California While California's state constitution outlawed slavery, the 1850
Act for the Government and Protection of Indians allowed the indenture of Native Californians. This law provided for apprenticing or indenturing Indian children to Whites, and also punished vagrant Indians by hiring them out to the highest bidder at a public auction if the Indian could not provide sufficient bond or bail. The new settlers took 10,000 to 27,000 California Native Americans as forced laborers, including 4,000 to 7,000 children. In April 1863, after the declaration of the
Emancipation Proclamation, the California legislature abolished all forms of legal indenture and apprenticeship for Native Americans.
End of Non-Penal Slavery At the start of the Civil War, there were 34 states in the United States, 15 of which were slave states. Eleven of these slave states, after conventions devoted to the topic, issued declarations of secession from the United States, created the
Confederate States of America, and were represented in the
Confederate Congress. The slave states that stayed in the Union – Maryland, Missouri, Delaware, and Kentucky (called
border states) – retained their representatives in the U.S. Congress. By the time the
Emancipation Proclamation was issued in 1863, Tennessee was already under Union control. Accordingly, the Proclamation applied only in the 10 remaining Confederate states. During the war, abolition of slavery was required by President
Abraham Lincoln for readmission of Confederate states. The
U.S. Congress, after the departure of the powerful Southern contingent in 1861, was generally abolitionist: in a plan endorsed by Abraham Lincoln, slavery in the
District of Columbia, which the Southern contingent had protected, was abolished in 1862. In Southern states, freedom for slaves typically followed the Union army's gaining control of an area. The Emancipation Proclamation declared all enslaved people in areas then under Confederate control free, but, in practice, freedom required either slaves reaching Union lines or Union forces reaching their area. As Union forces advanced from January 1, 1863, to
June 19, 1865, slaves were freed. West Virginia did not abolish slavery in its first proposed constitution of 1861, though it did ban the importation of slaves. In 1863, voters approved the Willey Amendment, which provided for gradual abolition of slavery, with the last enslaved people scheduled to be freed in 1884. On February 3, 1865, the state legislature approved immediate abolition. The
Restored Government of Virginia – the Unionist government that governed the limited territory then under Union control that had not left to form
West Virginia – voted to end slavery at a constitutional convention on March 10, 1864. Arkansas, part of which came under Union control by 1864, adopted an anti-slavery constitution on March 16, 1864. Louisiana – much of which had been under Union control since 1862 – abolished slavery through a new state constitution approved by voters September 5, 1864. The border states of Maryland (November 1, 1864) and Missouri (January 11, 1865) abolished slavery before the war's end. The Union-occupied state of Tennessee abolished slavery by popular vote on a constitutional amendment that took effect February 22, 1865. However, slavery legally persisted in Delaware, Kentucky, and (to a very limited extent, due to a trade ban but continued gradual abolition) New Jersey, until, on December 18, 1865, the
Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution abolished slavery throughout the United States, except as punishment for a crime, ending the distinction between slave and free states. ==See also==