Popular Sovereignty is a concept that holds that all political power is inherent in the people, meaning that it is the people who create the government, determine its nature and sustain it. This principle is central in the Declaration of Independence, in which Thomas Jefferson, on behalf of the thirteen colonies, formally declared America's independence from Britain and denounced the tyrant rule of the British Crown.
In the document, Jefferson claims that governments are instituted by men to protect people's unalienable rights of Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. However, he also claims that “whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government,” which reflects the Popular Sovereignty idea that the government is created by and subject to the will of the people.
Furthermore, Jefferson affirms the same idea right before he provides a list with the King's wrondoings that led the colonists to dissolve the political bands with Britain: “when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.--Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government.”
