FedX

Another unfun fact, that’s why Oklahoma has a panhandle. Texas wanted to enter the Union as a slave state, but it wasn’t allowed below a certain line of latitude. So Texas gave up some of its territory to ensure it could enter as a slave state, and a portion of that territory became the panhandle.

As posts over in Piefed are saying, it was about the state’s rights to have slavery. Very specifically, it was about the right for new states to have slavery. Till that point, the political divide was along slave states VS not slave states, a divide which partially exists to this day. As such, to maintain the balance of political power, each new territory added as a state would alternate between being a slave state and free state. However, with expansion into the west, a representation of progress and freedom, the federal government proposed a ban, not on slavery, but the enacting of new slave states. All existing Southern states would still have slavery.