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Popular Sovereignty

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Popular Sovereignty
During the time period 1846 there was much controversy on whether particular states should be free or proslavery. Senator Lewis Cass of Michigan was the first to try to improve these relations and conflicts by presenting the idea of popular sovereignty while opposing the Wilmot proviso. Despite his attempts and those of Stephen A. Douglas with his plan, this political doctrine failed in its attempts to resolve the dilemma of slavery in the territories by the civil war.
The invocation of popular sovereignty was from the result of the Kansas Nebraska Act. With the sectionalism of political parties being: democrats, whigs, republicans, and free soilers, the dispute in beliefs and opinions were greater than ever. Harsh and horrid words of slavery in the South began to reach the public people with the book Uncle Tom’s Cabin written by Harriet Beecher Stowe. Due to this in 1855 the battle for Kansas began, consisting of: the Shawnee Mission and Topeka, a Pro-slavery group and abolitionist fighting for the states status. In hopes to ease down the tension in what was called “bloody Kansas” the Lecompton constitution was brought, however; the problematic part of this agreement was If they were to vote for free state the owners who already had slaves could still keep them. Infuriated by the dilemma Senator Douglas and James bucharain came to the “Kansas Compromise” which allowed the people of Kansas to vote up or down the constitution. Popular sovereignty showed failure by all these events now that if one group of citizens were happy, the others were not.
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