Popular Sovereignty
The Kansas-Nebraska Act
The topic of the Lincoln-Douglas debates mostly concerned the extension of slavery into the US territories. Douglas believed that the territories should decide for themselves whether or not they wished to have slavery. He felt that power should reside at the local level and should reflect the wishes of the people. Lincoln stated, "A house divided against itself cannot stand." Lincoln believed that slavery must be dealt with as a moral wrong and that only the power of the federal government could extinguish slavery.
The Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854 was written by Senator Stephen A. Douglas. The act allowed the territories of Kansas and Nebraska to decide for themselves whether to allow slavery through the principle of popular sovereignty. This led to violent conflicts known as "Bleeding Kansas" as pro-slavery and anti-slavery settlers rushed into the territories to influence the outcome.
The Compromise of 1850 did not allow any choice in the matter. It reflected the increasing difficulty of creating new slave-states. It was the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854 that allowed the people of those two territories to vote on the slavery question. The only time it was tried (in Kansas), it led to terrible bloodshed, and was not tried again. The result was that Kansas rejected slavery.
Popular Sovereignty
Settlers of some new territories were able to decide about slavery for themselves.
It changed the balance of power which had previously existed by allowing those territories popular sovereignty to decide whether to allow slavery or not for themselves.
Study Island: Settlers of some new territories were able to decide about slavery for themselves.
The Kansas-Nebraska Act
The Kansas-Nebraska Act allowed the territories of Kansas and Nebraska to decide the issue of slavery by popular sovereignty. The people who lived in these territories would be able to vote on whether slavery would be allowed there. What effect did this have on Kansas?
Stephen Douglas believed that the issue of slavery should be determined by popular sovereignty, allowing individual states and territories to decide for themselves whether to allow slavery. He supported the idea that each state should have the right to choose whether to be a free or slave state.
As a believer in popular sovereignty, Louis Cass believed the populations of the territories would decide or themselves.
Stephen Douglas proposed the idea of popular sovereignty, which allowed residents in each territory to vote on whether or not to allow slavery. He believed this approach would prevent the federal government from imposing its views on the territories and let the residents decide for themselves.
Stephen Douglas proposed the idea of popular sovereignty, allowing territories to vote on whether to allow slavery. He believed this would settle the issue by letting the people in each territory decide for themselves.
Popular sovereignty was the right of the residents of these territories to vote themselves on the issue of slavery (in this case). In the Compromise of 1850, the territories of New Mexico and Utah were granted popular sovereignty to decide for themselves if slavery should be allowed or not in these areas.
Popular sovereignty is the idea that the residents of a territory should have the right to decide for themselves whether to allow slavery. This concept was influential in the debate over the spread of slavery into new territories during the mid-19th century in the United States, particularly with the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act in 1854 which allowed for popular sovereignty in those territories.