Explanation:
In the United States before 1865, a slave state was a state in which the slave trade was legal, while a free state was one in which it was not. There were enslaved persons in most free states in the 1840 census, and the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 specifically stated that an enslaved person remained enslaved even if their owner took them to a free state.
Historically, in the 18th century, slavery existed in all the British colonies of North America. In 1776, slavery was legal throughout the Thirteen Colonies, when colonies started to abolish the legality of the practice. Pennsylvania abolished slavery in 1780, and about half the states abolished slavery during the Revolutionary War or in the first decades of the new country. Although not one of the Thirteen Colonies, Vermont declared its independence from Britain in 1777 and at the same time abolished slavery, before being admitted as a state in 1791. Slavery became a very divisive issue and was a major issue during the writing of the U.S. Constitution, and slavery was the primary cause of the American Civil War. Before the Civil War, there were 19 free states and 15 slave states. During the war slavery was abolished on some of these jurisdictions, and the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, ratified in December of 1865, finally abolished slavery throughout the United States.
In the District of Columbia, formed with land from two slave states, Maryland and Virginia, the trade was abolished by the Compromise of 1850. So as to avoid losing the profitable slave trading businesses in Alexandria (one was Franklin and Armfield), Alexandria County, D.C., requested that it be returned to Virginia, where the slave trade was legal; this took place in 1847. Slavery in the District of Columbia remained legal until 1862, when the walkout of all the Southern legislators permitted those remaining to pass the ban, which abolitionists had been seeking for decades.