slave state
noun
1
: a state of the U.S. in which slavery was legal until the Civil War
2
: a nation subjected to totalitarian rule
Example Sentences
Recent Examples on the Web Settlers poured into Kansas, many of them pro-slavery from neighboring Missouri, a slave state. 
Steve Grant, Hartford Courant, 6 Aug. 2022 In 1845, Texas joined the United States as a slave state. Scott Dalton, Smithsonian Magazine, 5 July 2022 This seemed to promise the decline of the Comanche empire and the security of Texas as a burgeoning slave state. Phil Klay, The New Yorker, 11 June 2022 While floating along the Ohio River between Kentucky, a slave state, and Indiana, a free state, participants will hear the stories of two families seeking to escape enslavement by boat. Gege Reed, The Courier-Journal, 8 June 2022 How California became a slave state and stayed that way for decades after the Civil War. Gwendolyn Wu, San Francisco Chronicle, 29 Nov. 2021 Dred Scott and his wife Harriet sued for their freedom in Missouri, a slave state, after having lived with their owner, an Army surgeon, in the free Territory of Wisconsin. CNN, 29 Sep. 2021 In 1833 when Harlan was born, his native Kentucky was part of the south but also the frontier, still a slave state but one increasingly divided on the subject, and home to a small but growing population of free Black people. BostonGlobe.com, 22 July 2021 Maine was allowed into the union as a free state and was allowed to draft a constitution as a slave state, so long as no other new slave states formed north of Missouri’s southern border. From Usa Today Network And Wire Reports, USA TODAY, 20 Sep. 2021 See More
Steve Grant, Hartford Courant, 6 Aug. 2022 In 1845, Texas joined the United States as a slave state. Scott Dalton, Smithsonian Magazine, 5 July 2022 This seemed to promise the decline of the Comanche empire and the security of Texas as a burgeoning slave state. Phil Klay, The New Yorker, 11 June 2022 While floating along the Ohio River between Kentucky, a slave state, and Indiana, a free state, participants will hear the stories of two families seeking to escape enslavement by boat. Gege Reed, The Courier-Journal, 8 June 2022 How California became a slave state and stayed that way for decades after the Civil War. Gwendolyn Wu, San Francisco Chronicle, 29 Nov. 2021 Dred Scott and his wife Harriet sued for their freedom in Missouri, a slave state, after having lived with their owner, an Army surgeon, in the free Territory of Wisconsin. CNN, 29 Sep. 2021 In 1833 when Harlan was born, his native Kentucky was part of the south but also the frontier, still a slave state but one increasingly divided on the subject, and home to a small but growing population of free Black people. BostonGlobe.com, 22 July 2021 Maine was allowed into the union as a free state and was allowed to draft a constitution as a slave state, so long as no other new slave states formed north of Missouri’s southern border. From Usa Today Network And Wire Reports, USA TODAY, 20 Sep. 2021 See More Word History
First Known Use
1809, in the meaning defined at sense 1