How many slave states were in the union as of 1860?
The 15 slave states at the time of the Civil War were Alabama, Arkansas, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, Mississippi, Missouri, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, and Virginia (including West Virginia). (The District of Columbia also had slavery prior to the Civil War.) Though not states, slavery was practiced in the Nebraska Territory and in the Indian Territory (Oklahoma) as early as the 1850s. The last northern state to abolish slavery was New Jersey in 1804, although the laws of that state retained slaves over a certain age as “apprentices for life” until the 13th Amendment, in 1865. Eleven of these states declared their secession in 1860 and 1861 to form the Confederate States of America; Delaware, Kentucky, Maryland and Missouri did not leave the Union. West Virginia joined the Union as a slave state in 1863 after seceding from Virginia.
