How does popular sovereignty undermine the Missouri compromise?
Popular sovereignty is the principle that the power and authority of the government comes from the consent of the people. In the context of the Missouri Compromise, popular sovereignty undermined the agreement by allowing the expansion of slavery into new territories, as it gave the people in those territories the right to decide whether to allow slavery or not.
The Missouri Compromise of 1820 was a political agreement that aimed to maintain the balance between slave and free states in the United States. Under this compromise, Missouri was admitted as a slave state, while Maine was admitted as a free state, thus maintaining the equal representation of slave and free states in the Senate. Additionally, it established a line (36°30' parallel) where slavery was prohibited in the remaining territories acquired from the Louisiana Purchase, above the southern boundary of Missouri.
However, the implementation of popular sovereignty through the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854 undermined the compromises established by the Missouri Compromise. This act allowed the residents of the Kansas and Nebraska territories to decide through popular sovereignty whether to allow slavery within their borders, effectively repealing the prohibition on slavery above the line established by the Missouri Compromise.
The introduction of popular sovereignty paved the way for intense conflict and violence between pro-slavery and anti-slavery supporters in Kansas, known as "Bleeding Kansas." This conflict demonstrated that popular sovereignty as a decision-making process was subject to manipulation and voter fraud, as pro-slavery supporters from Missouri crossed the border to sway the outcome of elections in favor of slavery.
Furthermore, popular sovereignty shifted the focus from a unified national consensus on the issue of slavery to a localized decision that could vary from territory to territory. This shift intensifies sectional tensions and eroded the trust in the effectiveness of the Missouri Compromise. It ultimately accelerated the process of discrediting the compromise and contributed to enhanced divisions between the North and the South, leading to the outbreak of the American Civil War.