Due to the long distance between the colonies and England, the British allowed colonist to set up local governments and tax themselves. They allowed their collonies to self-govern for practical reasons.
On the other hand, French collonies were completely subjected to the French king, and did not posses any form of self-government.
France expected that their colonies would always be part of
France. They used an approach of assimilation which involved introducing their
culture to the colonies. Britain trained their colonies to be self-governing.
They were treated as self-governing entities with colonialists to govern them.
In the US Constitution we see the principle of popular sovereignty embodied and expressed. It is one of the most important ideas of Enlightenment. Sovereignty lies with the people, not in an absolute monarch claiming to rule by divine right. It is up to the people to decide who should rule them.
The compromise lasted until the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act in 1854, when Illinois Senator Stephen Douglas proposed legislation allowing the issue of slavery to be decided in the new territories. ... Once the transatlantic slave trade was prohibited, domestic slave trading throughout the South increased.
