slaveholder
noun
slave·hold·er
ˈslāv-ˌhōl-dər 
variants
or less commonly slave holder
plural slaveholders also slave holders
: someone who holds one or more people involuntarily and under threat of violence within a system of chattel slavery
In the teaching of American history, perhaps the most difficult lesson to convey is that slavery once held the entire country in its grip. It was not just the business of enslaved black people, slaveholders, or the South.—
Karen E. Fields and Barbara J. Fields
Karen E. Fields and Barbara J. FieldsEach slaveholder's inventoried listing of the number of human beings claimed as owned … was associated with their specific census data, and has, in this age of trillions of pages of digitized historic records, become a lamp shining light on the painful lost family history of many Black Americans.—J. W. Sayles
J. W. SaylesBy allowing Southern states to count their slaves … for purposes of representation, while denying those slaves all other civil or human rights, the Constitution granted slave holders magnified political power, while creating an incentive to acquire more slaves.—Peter Sagal
Peter Sagalcalled also slave owner
Examples of slaveholder in a Sentence
Recent Examples on the Web
The church’s rector, also a slaveholder, was very concerned with converting Black and Indigenous Bostonians.
—Ari Daniel, Smithsonian Magazine, 17 Apr. 2025
Unlike York, their fate is too well known: in 1857, seven of nine Supreme Court judges, four of them slaveholders, decreed that Dred Scott, and every other person of African descent, was not and could not be a citizen of the US.
—Matthew Wills, JSTOR Daily, 29 Mar. 2025
And there is plenty of information about the Shawnee mission’s founder, Methodist minister Thomas Johnson, a slaveholder from Virginia.
—Alfredo Sosa, The Christian Science Monitor, 13 Mar. 2025
Monday's announcement is the latest push to honor Tubman on the currency and remove Jackson, the country's seventh president and a slaveholder.
—Chandelis Duster, NPR, 10 Mar. 2025
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Ari Daniel, Smithsonian Magazine, 17 Apr. 2025
Unlike York, their fate is too well known: in 1857, seven of nine Supreme Court judges, four of them slaveholders, decreed that Dred Scott, and every other person of African descent, was not and could not be a citizen of the US.
—Matthew Wills, JSTOR Daily, 29 Mar. 2025
And there is plenty of information about the Shawnee mission’s founder, Methodist minister Thomas Johnson, a slaveholder from Virginia.
—Alfredo Sosa, The Christian Science Monitor, 13 Mar. 2025
Monday's announcement is the latest push to honor Tubman on the currency and remove Jackson, the country's seventh president and a slaveholder.
—Chandelis Duster, NPR, 10 Mar. 2025
See All Example Sentences for slaveholder
Cite this Entry
“Slaveholder.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/slaveholder. Accessed 24 Apr. 2025.
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slaveholder
noun
slave·hold·er
ˈslāv-ˌhōl-dər
: someone who holds one or more people in forced servitude
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