Popular Sovereignty in The United States - Emergence of The Term "popular Sovereignty" and Its Pejorative Connotation

Emergence of The Term "popular Sovereignty" and Its Pejorative Connotation

In 1846, as the dispute over slavery in the United States developed in the wake of the Mexican-American War, the use of the term "popular sovereignty" began to gain currency as a method to resolve the status of slavery in the country. The war ended with the United States acquisition of lands once held by Mexico. The effort to incorporate these lands into the United States uncovered long-simmering disputes about the extension of slavery – whether slavery would be permitted, protected, abolished, or perpetuated in these newly acquired areas. Congressional attempts to resolve this issue led to gridlock. Several congressional leaders, in an effort to resolve the "deadlock" over slavery as a term or condition for admission or administration of the territories, searched for a "middle ground."

Some moderates asserted that slavery in the territories was not a matter for Congress to resolve. Rather, they argued, the people in each territory, like the people in each American state, were the sovereigns thereof, and as that sovereign they could determine the status of slavery for themselves. In this way, the term "popular sovereignty" became part of the rhetoric for leaving it up to residents of the American territories (and not Congress) to decide whether or not to accept or reject slavery. In essence, this also left it up to the people of the territories to resolve the controversy over expansion of slavery in the United States. This formed a "middle ground" between proponents of an outright limitation on slavery’s spread to the territories and those opposing limitation. The idea tied into the widespread assumption of Americans that the people were the sovereign.

As explained by historian Michael Morrison, the "idea of local self-determination, or, as it would become known, popular sovereignty" began to occupy the attention of members of Congress in 1846 and 1847. In modern historiography, Illinois U.S. Senator Stephen A. Douglas is most closely associated with the idea of popular sovereignty as a solution to the issue of the extension of slavery in the territories. Douglas’s biographer, the historian Robert W. Johannsen, observed that Douglas was

chairman of the Committee on Territories in both the House and Senate, and he discharged the responsibilities of his position with single-minded devotion…. During the debates over the organization of the Mexican Cession, Douglas evolved his doctrine of popular sovereignty, and from that time on it was irrevocably linked to his interest in the territories and in the West. His commitment to popular sovereignty was the deeper because he recognized in it a formula that would (he hoped) bridge the differences between the North and South on the slavery question, thus preserving the Union.…

The term "popular sovereignty" was not coined by Senator Douglas. Rather, in connection with slavery in the territories, the term was first used by presidential candidate and Michigan U.S. Senator Lewis Cass in his "Nicholson Letter" of 1847. But the term "popular sovereignty" is now closely tied to Douglas’s legacy. Ultimately, the connection of the doctrine of popular sovereignty with the failed attempt to accommodate slavery gives rise to its pejorative connotation today. Douglas

ultimately became the victim of the very politics he sought to remove from territorial policy" by advancing the idea of popular sovereignty. "His efforts were not judged in terms of their impact on the needs and desires of the territories … rather they were appraised in terms of their relation to the power struggle between North and South and to the issue of slavery. Despite Douglas’s intentions, the territories continued to be but pawns in a larger political controversy.