Border States

American  

plural noun

1. U.S. History. the Slave States of Delaware, Maryland, Kentucky, and Missouri, which refused to secede from the Union in 1860–61.

2. the U.S. states touching the Canadian border.

3. certain countries of central and northern Europe that border on the former Soviet Union and belonged to the Russian Empire: Finland, Poland (prior to 1940), Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania.

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Example Sentences

He owed his victory to Illinois, most of the smaller states in the West and Middle West, and particularly to the South and the Border States.

From Time Magazine Archive

Border States None of the states have carried integration quite so far as the District of Columbia, but the six Border States, on the whole, have made heartening progress.

From Time Magazine Archive

They are the cornerstone, the bulwark, among which "bolts" and "splits" and outright transitions occur far less frequently than among the eleven Western States, the eleven Eastern States, the four Border States.

From Time Magazine Archive

In another statement last week, Secretary Bennett announced that six Southern and Border States had yet to comply fully with a 17-year-old court order to desegregate public colleges.

From Time Magazine Archive

The story opens in one of the Border States, where two Northern families had settled only a few years before the exciting questions which immediately preceded organized hostilities were under discussion.

From Brother Against Brother The War on the Border by Optic, Oliver