free state

Examples of free state in the following topics:

• The Compromise of 1850

  • The Compromise of 1850 left the question of slave versus free states to popular sovereignty.
  • However, the admission of California as a free state would tip the balance of power in the Senate.
  • Southern politicians, alarmed that they would lose their majority, pushed for Congress to pass legislation that would allow California to be admitted as a slave state, or to extend the Missouri Compromise line to the Pacific, effectively splitting the state in half into one free state and one slave state.
  • California becomes a free state, and Texas's boundary would remain at its present-day limits.
  • By allowing popular sovereignty to determine slave or free states, the Senate basically guaranteed future discord over the sectional balance of power in the coming years.

• Slavery in the North

  • However, during the decades leading up to the American Civil War, almost all slaves in the North had been emancipated through a series of state legislature statutes, creating the northern "free states" in opposition to southern "slave states."
  • This territory was entirely slave-free from its inception and separated by the Ohio River from the South, which was pushing for an expansion of legal slavery into the West.
  • The concept of "free states" developed in contrast to these "slave states" by the early 19th century.
  • This map illustrates the free states in the United States in 1789, which included Pennsylvania, Connecticut, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and Maine.
  • The Northwest Ordinance was also a free territory, though it was not yet incorporated as a state.

• The Politics of Expansion

  • National politics of the nineteenth century were divided on whether the new territories should become slave states or free states.
  • One problem created with westward expansion was the admission of new states--whether they should be slave or free.
  • National policy developed to keep a balance between slave and free states, resulting in the joint admission of Missouri (slave) and Maine (free) as new states in 1820.
  • Texas and Florida were admitted as slave states in 1845, and California was added as a free state in 1850.
  • The concept of Manifest Destiny, the belief that the United States was destined to expand across the continent, was primarily used by Democrats to support the expansion plans of the Polk Administration, and the idea of expansion was also supported by the Whigs like Henry Clay, Daniel Webster, and Abraham Lincoln who wanted to deepen the economy.

• The Missouri Compromise

  • Admitting Missouri as a slave state also threatened the tenuous balance between free and slave states in the Senate by giving slave states a two-vote advantage.
  • Missouri and Maine (which had been part of Massachusetts) would enter the Union at the same time: Maine as a free state and Missouri as a slave state.
  • The country had been equally divided between eleven slave states and eleven free states.
  • For this reason, northern states wanted Maine admitted as a free state to maintain the balance.
  • This map of the United States, circa 1820, shows the line between free and slave states that was established by the Missouri Compromise of 1820.

• Slavery and Liberty

  • Most states did this in a very gradual process, but by 1840, virtually all blacks in the North were free.
  • Free blacks, however, were still subject to racial segregation in the North.
  • In 1821 the ACS established the colony of Liberia, and assisted thousands of former African-American slaves and free blacks to emigrate there from the United States.
  • The Underground Railroad was a network of secret routes and safe houses used by black slaves to escape to free states and Canada with the aid of abolitionists who were sympathetic to their cause.
  • New York (1799) and New Jersey (1804) adopted laws gradually freeing enslaved people, but some people in these states remained enslaved until 1824 (NY) and 1865 (NJ).

• Legal Changes to Slavery: 1777-1804

  • By 1810, 75% of all blacks in the North were free, and by 1840, they all were free.
  • What developed was a Northern block of free states, united into one contiguous geographic area, that generally shared an anti-slavery culture.
  • Quaker and Methodist ministers particularly urged slaveholders to free their slaves.
  • The number and proportion of free blacks in the states rose dramatically until 1810, with more than half concentrated in the Upper South.
  • In Delaware, nearly 75% of blacks were free by this time.

• Race and Opportunity

  • By 1810, 75 percent of African Americans in the North and 13.5 percent of all African Americans in the United States were free.
  • By 1819, there were exactly 11 free and 11 slave states, which increased sectionalism in the United States.
  • Territories seeking statehood above the line would become free states, and those below the line would become slave states.
  • By 1830, there were 319,000 free African Americans in the United States, 150,000 of whom lived in the Northern states.
  • After his owner refused, he sought relief in the state courts, arguing that by virtue of having lived in areas where slavery was banned, he should be free.

• Free Blacks in the South

  • Free blacks were an important demographic in the United States, though their rights were often curtailed.
  • A "free Negro" (or "free black"), was the term used prior to the abolition of slavery in the United States to describe African Americans who were not slaves.
  • Many blacks who were elected as either state or local officials during the Reconstruction era in the South had been free in the South prior to the Civil War.
  • Frederick Douglass, an American slave who escaped to the North, earned his education, and led the abolitionist movement in the United States.
  • Freedom's Journal was the first African-American owned and operated newspaper published in the United States.

• Early Opposition to Slavery

  • In reaction, Virginia and other state legislatures passed restrictions on free blacks, as well as prohibiting the education, assembly, and hiring out of slaves, to restrict their chances to learn and to plan similar rebellions.
  • He warned Virginia Governor James Monroe, who called out the state militia.
  • Some Virginia slaveholders were nervous about the sharp increase in the number of free blacks in the slave state.
  • Free blacks had to petition the legislature to stay in the state, and were often aided in that goal by white friends or allies.
  • The very existence of free blacks challenged the conditions of slave states.

• The Economy and the Silver Solution

  • Proponents of "free silver" believed that the United States economy should be based on silver instead of gold.
  • Supporters of Free Silver were called "Silverites".
  • Everyone agreed that free silver would raise prices.
  • Outside the mining states of the West, the Republican Party steadfastly opposed Free Silver, arguing that the best road to national prosperity was "sound money," or gold, which was central to international trade.
  • The Sherman Silver Purchase Act was enacted on July 14, 1890 as a United States federal law.