Slave states and free states

Rare card · No. 58245

In the United States before 1865, a free state was a state in which slavery and the internal or domestic slave trade were prohibited, while a slave state was one in which they were legal. Between 1812 and 1850, it was considered by the slave states to be politically imperative that the number of free states not exceed the number of slave states, so new states were admitted in slave–free pairs. There were, nonetheless, some slaves in most free states up to the 1840 census, and the Fugitive Slave Clause of the U.S. Constitution, as implemented by the Fugitive Slave Act of 1793 and the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, provided that a slave did not become free by entering a free state and must be returned to their owner. Enforcement of these laws became one of the controversies that arose between slave and free states. By the 18th century, slavery was legal throughout the Thirteen Colonies, but at the time of the American Revolution, rebel colonies started to abolish the practice. Pennsylvania abolished...

Read on Wikipedia · Image United_States_1789-03-1789-08.png: Made by User:Golbez. United_States_1800-07-04-1800-07-10.png: Made by User:Golbez. United_States_1821-07-1821-08.png: Made by User:Golbez. United_States_1837-01-183…, CC BY 3.0