Answer: Popular sovereignty in 19th century America emerged as a compromise strategy for determining whether a Western territory would permit or prohibit slavery. First promoted in the 1840s in response to debates over western expansion, popular sovereignty argued that in a democracy, residents of a territory, and not the federal government, should be allowed to decide on slavery within their borders. In 1854, Stephen Douglas most famously attempted to implement the measure with the Kansas-Nebraska Act. A major consequence of popular sovereignty’s application was the rush by both pro- and anti-slavery forces to populate Kansas and determine its fate, which manifested in violence and fraud.
In 1846, the Wilmot Proviso, which sought to forbid slavery in the territories acquired following the Mexican-American War, died on the floor of the Senate. In an effort to prevent future prohibitive measures against slavery in the West, Democratic Senator Lewis Cass of Michigan, offered up the idea of popular sovereignty. In theory, as Cass and his supporters reasoned, in a democratic society free citizens determined the future.
But in practice, questions remained concerning how to determine who qualified as a resident of a territory, how to regulate voting fraud, and what would happen to slaveowners and their slaves in territories where slavery was voted down. Still, by allowing the people to decide, Cass hoped to ease the building tensions between the Northern and Southern wings of the Democratic Party. Nonetheless, sectional debate and
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