Arizona Organic Act

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The Arizona Organic Act was a United States federal law introduced as H.R. 357 in the 2d session of the 37th Congress on March 12, 1862, by Rep. James M. Ashley of Ohio. The Act provided for the creation of the Arizona Territory by the division of the New Mexico Territory into two territories by dividing it along the current boundary between New Mexico and Arizona. On February 24, 1863, President Abraham Lincoln, signed the bill once it had been approved by Congress. The bill established a provisional government for the new territory. It also abolished slavery in the new Arizona Territory, but did not abolish it in the portion that remained the New Mexico Territory.

The New Mexico Territory had a long history of enslavement of Native American people by each other and by Hispanic settlers. There were relatively few African American slaves in New Mexico in 1860, although there were some and the New Mexico legislature formally approved of slavery shortly before the Civil War. There had been a demand for Arizona statehood during the 1850s; however, Congress resisted because of a well-grounded fear that Arizona would become a slave state.

During the war, the Confederate States of America established an entity called the Arizona Territory, which had different boundaries from modern Arizona. According to historian Martin Hardwick Hall, invading Confederate troops brought an unknown number of slaves into Confederate Arizona, but, in his book Blood & Treasure: Confederate Empire in the Southwest, Donald S. Frazier estimates there were as many as fifty slaves with Confederate officials and troops.