Stephen Douglas believed in fashionable sovereignty, the precept that the residents of every territory ought to determine the query of slavery for themselves via their territorial legislatures. This contrasted sharply with the positions of abolitionists, who sought a nationwide ban on slavery, and a few Southern Democrats who believed settlers had a constitutional proper to convey enslaved individuals into the territories. Douglas argued that fashionable sovereignty greatest embodied the American ultimate of self-government and was a sensible compromise to take care of nationwide unity within the face of rising sectional tensions.
This precept turned a central tenet of Douglas’s political profession and a key aspect of the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854. This act successfully repealed the Missouri Compromise of 1820, which had restricted the growth of slavery. The appliance of fashionable sovereignty in Kansas and Nebraska led to violent battle between pro-slavery and anti-slavery factions, a interval generally known as “Bleeding Kansas.” This battle underscored the constraints and inherent contradictions of fashionable sovereignty as an answer to the slavery challenge, and contributed considerably to the polarization that finally led to the Civil Struggle.
