From: Mike Pilla
Date: 4/13/00
Time: 3:20:18 AM
Remote Name: 155.247.158.40
“Popular sovereignty” was created so that the people in the state, or territory, that they lived in were given the power of popular vote to decide whether or not their region was to have slavery or not. Northern legislators hoped that people living in this region would choose, what they thought to be the right thing to do. But, to their demise, the territories of Nebraska and Kansas weren’t so easily taken for granted. Kansas, being so close to Missouri, already had a large number of slave owner inhabitants, as did parts of the Nebraska territory, thus because of popular sovereignty both territories became open to slavery. Northerners were not pleased with this and tried to make sure that Kansas wouldn’t be admitted to the union as a pro-slavery state. The Republican Party was the enduring outcome to this cry from the sectionalism of views carried by the nation. The sectionalism that was spreading across the nation was northern Republicans who wanted to end slavery and popular sovereignty. And on the other side there were the southern democrats who wanted slavery, popular sovereignty, and probably their own country down the line! But popular sovereignty was the issue used in the election of 1856 – platforms for candidates to be pro or con for it, and add chaos to an already burning fire spreading across the nation. This issue divided the Democratic Party to northern and southern parties, demolished the Whigs, and caused other small political parties to spread across the country. The time of sectionalism was at hand, the compromise of 1850 and the backfire of popular sovereignty in the minds of northern legislators caused an uproar in politics – leading to an even more divided union…politically and culturally.