BORDER STATES, before the Civil War, the line of slave States lying next the free States: Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, Kentucky and Missouri. The term was some times improperly made to include North Caro lina and Tennessee, probably because their mountain districts held so large a proportion of loyalists; and for no special rea son. Their political position was dictated by the facts that: (1) After the prohibition of the slave trade one of their chief industries was breeding slaves for exportation to the cotton, rice and sugar plantations of the south ernmost States. In the Virginia convention of 1832 it was said to be the most profitable in the State. (2) From their position they were the chief sufferers from the escape of fugitive slaves; in 1850 this was estimated at a loss of $3,000,000 a year, and these States were the most insistent advocates of the Fugitive Slave Law and its enforcement; and in 1860 a Mis souri senator urged the creation of a Federal police to patrol the border line for this purpose. (3) In case of war they would be the chief battlefield. They therefore furnished the back bone, if not the genesis of every political move ment to stop the slavery agitation or conciliate the sections. The strength of the Know-Noth
ing party of 1856 and the Constitutional Union party of 1860 (Bell-Everett) was almost exclu sively in the border States; the Peace Confer ence of 1861 and the proposed Crittenden Com promise were the work of these States. They tried to prevent the outbreak of hostilities, and when the war began the governor of Ken tucky went so far as to attempt making his State a neutral power outside both govern ments, and forbade either of them occupying it without the consent of the State authorities. Finally, howeverthey split up according to their natural affinities; the three not border States at all — North Carolina, Tennessee and Arkansas — seceded, with Virginia; while in Kentucky, Maryland, Delaware and Missouri, the loyal element, with government help, pre vented the State from going out. They never gave up hope through the war, however, of reconciling differences by a convention of all the old States, North and South.