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To some moderates, slavery in the territories was not a matter for Congress to resolve; they argued that the people in each territory, like those in each American state, were the sovereigns thereof and should determine the status of slavery. [11] Popular sovereignty became part of the rhetoric for leaving to residents of the new American ...
The Kansas–Nebraska Act of 1854 called for popular sovereignty: the decision about slavery would be made by popular vote of the territory's settlers rather than by legislators in Washington, D.C. Existing sectional tensions surrounding slavery quickly found focus in Kansas. [5] [6]
Douglas and Pierce hoped that popular sovereignty would help bring an end to the national debate over slavery, but the Kansas–Nebraska Act outraged Northerners. The division between pro-slavery and anti-slavery forces caused by the Act was the death knell for the ailing Whig Party, which broke apart after the Act.
In 1846, northern Whigs crossed party lines to support a proposal by David Wilmot, a Democrat from Pennsylvania, to exclude slavery from all of the territory acquired from Mexico. The 1848 Democratic National Convention repudiated the Wilmot Proviso and nominated Lewis Cass for president on a platform endorsing popular sovereignty.
James G. Birney was the two-time presidential nominee of the Liberty Party, a forerunner of the Free Soil Party.. Though William Lloyd Garrison and most other abolitionists of the 1830s had generally shunned the political system, a small group of abolitionists founded the Liberty Party in 1840.
Kansas Territory was established on May 30, 1854, by the Kansas–Nebraska Act.This act established both the Nebraska Territory and Kansas Territory. The most momentous provision of the Act in effect repealed the Missouri Compromise of 1820 and allowed the settlers of Kansas Territory to determine by popular sovereignty whether Kansas would be a free state or a slave state.
As the debate dragged on into 1848, the issue of slavery's extension promised to be the major issue in the upcoming presidential election. Once again snubbing Martin Van Buren, the Democratic National Convention nominated Lewis Cass of Michigan on a platform endorsing popular sovereignty.
In 1854, the Kansas–Nebraska Act reversed long-standing compromises by providing that each new state of the Union would decide its posture on slavery (popular sovereignty). The newly formed Republican Party stood against the expansion of slavery and won control of most Northern states (with enough electoral votes to win the presidency in 1860).