Popular sovereignty
Popular sovereignty is the idea that the power of a state and its government are created and sustained by the permission of its people, who give their permission through their elected representatives. It can also can be described as the "voice of the people," who are the source of all political power. The concept is very similar to a social contract, which was supported by philosophers such as Thomas Hobbes, John Locke and Jean-Jacques Rousseau.
The American Revolution created government on popular sovereignty. In the 1850s, popular sovereignty in the United States was a very controversial way to deal with slavery in U.S. territories and was pushed by U.S. Senator Stephen A. Douglas. It meant that the people living in territories would be the ones to decide if slavery would be allowed there. Inteded to keep the peace over slavey, it led to fighting in Bleeding Kansas. That was because abolitionists and other opponents of slavery there and supporters of slavery came to the Kansas territory to vote in its elections,often illegally.
Other books
- Childers, Christopher (2012), The Failure of Popular Sovereignty: Slavery, Manifest Destiny, and the Radicalization of Southern Politics, University of Kansas Press, p. 334
- Etcheson, Nicole (Spring–Summer 2004), "The Great Principle of Self-Government: Popular Sovereignty and Bleeding Kansa", Kansas History, 27: 14–29 links it to Jacksonian Democracy
- Johannsen, Robert W. (1973), Stephen A. Douglas, Oxford University Press, pp. 576–613.