Free state (United States)

The free and slave states as of 1861, with free states in blue and slave states in red.

The free states of the United States existed in opposition to the slave states prior to the American Civil War. The term "free state" described a state in the antebellum United States in which slavery was either prohibited or eliminated over time.

Background

The Northeastern and Mid-Atlantic States, including Massachusetts, New York, Pennsylvania and New Jersey, had legally sanctioned slavery in the 17th, 18th and even part of the 19th centuries, but in the generation or two before the American Civil War, almost all slaves had been emancipated through a series of statutes.

The first U.S. region entirely free of slavery was the Midwest, which was ordained free under the Northwest Ordinance of 1787, passed just before the U.S. Constitution was ratified. The states created from this region—Ohio, Indiana, Michigan, Illinois, Wisconsin and Minnesota —were generally settled by New Englanders and American Revolutionary War veterans granted land there. Because this region was entirely slave free from its inception and separated by the Ohio River from the South—which was pushing an expansion of legal slavery into the West—the concept of "free states" developed in contrast to "slave states." The rural Midwest, at one time in direct East-West rivalry with the Northeastern commercial states, realigned with the Northeastern states, newly free of slavery and together created the amalgamation of states prohibiting slavery, known in the context of the Civil War as the free states.

Anti-slavery settlers in "Bleeding Kansas" in the 1850s were called Free-Staters, because they fought (successfully) to include Kansas in the Union as a free state.

At the beginning of the Civil War, the 19 free states were as follows: Maine, Vermont, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Kansas, Iowa, Oregon and California. In New Jersey, there were still slaves at the time of the Civil War. New Jersey law called for the gradual emancipation of slaves, and by the time of the Civil War most but not all slaves in that state had been freed.

Original state-based abolition efforts

Prior to the American Revolution, all of the British North American colonies had slavery, but the Revolutionary War gave impetus to a general anti-slavery sentiment. The Northwest Territory, now known as the Midwest, was organized under the Northwest Ordinance with a prohibition on slavery in 1787. Massachusetts accepted that its 1780 Constitution effectively abolished slavery, and several other northern states adopted statutes requiring gradual emancipation. In 1804, New Jersey became the last state to embark on the course of gradual emancipation.

Significant dates	VT	PA	MA	NH	CT	RI	NY	NJ
European settlement	1666	1638	1620	1623	1633	1636	1624	1620
First record of slavery	c.1760?	1639	1629?	1645	1639	1652	1626	1626?
Official end of slavery	1777	1780	1783	1783	1784	1784	1799	1804
Actual end of slavery	1777?	c.1845?	1783	c.1845?	1848	1842	1827	1865

Conflict over new territories

During the War of 1812, British officers promised emancipation to slaves that would support their side. 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 led politicians to be concerned about the balance of power in the U.S. Senate, where each State was represented by two Senators. With an equal number of slave states and free states, the United States Senate was equally divided. As the population of the free states began to outstrip the population of the slave states, leading to control of the United States 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. 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.

Missouri Compromise

Controversy over whether Missouri should be admitted as a slave State, resulted in the Missouri Compromise of 1820, which admitted Missouri into the union as a slave state, and specified that the remaining Louisiana Purchase territory north of latitude 36° 30', which described 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 that compromise, the admission of Maine as a free state was secured to balance Missouri's admission as a slave state.

Status of Texas and the Mexican Cession states

The admission of Texas and the acquisition of vast new western territories after the Mexican-American War further excited controversy. 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. In 1850, California was admitted as a free state, without an additional slave state as balance. This would have created a free state majority in the Senate, except that California agreeably sent one pro-slavery and one anti-slavery senator to Washington, D.C. Thus, the admission of California increased the anxiety of pro-slavery politicians but did not change the balance in the Senate.

Last battles

The difficulty of identifying any territory which could be organized into additional slave states stalled the process of opening the western territories to settlement, while slave state politicians sought a solution. Efforts were made to acquire Cuba and to annex Nicaragua—both to be slave states. In 1854, the Missouri Compromise of 1820 was repealed, and an effort was initiated to organize Kansas as a slave state. Kansas was paired with Minnesota for admission, but the admission of Kansas as a slave state was blocked because of questions over the legitimacy of its slave state constitution. 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

Before 1812, the concern about balancing slave-states and free states was not profound. This is how the states lined up in 1812:

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

Following 1812, and until the Civil War, maintaining the balance of free and slave states within the federal legislature was considered of paramount importance if the Union was to be preserved, and 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
		California (One pro-slavery Senator)	1850
Kansas (Blocked)		Minnesota	1858
		Oregon	1859
		Kansas	1861

End of slave states

Maryland and the pro-Union government of Missouri abolished slavery during the Civil War. The Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, ratified December 6, 1865, abolished slavery throughout the United States, ending the distinction. Ratification of the 13th Amendment was a prerequisite for the return of local rule to those states that had seceded.

External links

Slavery in the North