Popular sovereignty in the United States
Encyclopedia
The American Revolution
marked a departure in the concept of popular sovereignty as it had been discussed and employed in the European historical context. With their Revolution, Americans substituted the sovereignty in the person of the English king, George III, with a collective sovereign—composed of the people. Henceforth, American revolutionaries by and large agreed and were committed to the principle that governments were legitimate only if they rested on popular sovereignty – that is, the sovereignty of the people. In 18th century American political thought, “the people” excluded most of the population, such as women, African Americans, those lacking sufficient property, Native Americans, and children.
This idea that the people were sovereign (often linked with the notion of the consent of the governed
) was not invented by the American revolutionaries. Rather, the consent of the governed and the idea of the people as a sovereign had clear 17th and 18th century intellectual roots in English history. The American contribution lay in what Americans did with the idea that the people were the sovereign—how they struggled with and put that idea into practice. Before the American Revolution, few examples existed of a people deliberately creating their own governments. Most people in the world experienced governments as an inheritance—whether monarchies or expressions of raw power. What underscored the excitement surrounding the creation of constitutions establishing governments in America after Independence was the fact that Americans deliberately and self-consciously created governments at one single moment explicitly relying on the authority of the sovereignty of the people (or “popular sovereignty”). Having relied upon the people as the collective sovereign to establish their first state constitutions (and later the Federal constitution), numerous questions remained for Americans to answer. What did a collective sovereign mean? How did one recognize the voice or expression of that collective sovereign and in what ways could that collective sovereign act? Americans struggled and contested over the answers to these questions from the time they declared Independence to the eve of the Civil War. During this period the idea of the people as the sovereign both unified and divided Americans in thinking about government and the basis of the Union. Historian Ronald Formisano notes that "assertions of the peoples' sovereignty over time contained an unintended dynamic of raising popular expectations for a greater degree of popular participation and that the peoples' will be satisfied."
in American Sovereigns: The People and America's Constitutional Tradition Before the Civil War, both before and after the Revolution, Americans believed “that the people in a republic, like a king in a monarchy, exercised plenary authority as the sovereign. This interpretation persisted from the revolutionary period up to the Civil War.” However as wide spread as this belief in the power of the people was, Americans infrequently used the term “popular sovereignty" to describe the idea. Rather, in expressing this founding concept of rule by the people, they described how “the people” would exercise sovereignty in America and that American government would reflect the “sovereignty of the people.” Use of the actual term “popular sovereignty” was infrequent before the 1840s.
Some moderates asserted that slavery in the territories was not a matter for Congress to resolve. Rather, they argued, the people in each territory, like the people in each American state, were the sovereigns thereof, and as that sovereign they could determine the status of slavery for themselves. In this way, the term “popular sovereignty” became part of the rhetoric for leaving it up to residents of the American territories (and not Congress) to decide whether or not to accept or reject slavery. In essence, this also left it up to the people of the territories to resolve the controversy over expansion of slavery in the United States. This formed a “middle ground” between proponents of an outright limitation on slavery’s spread to the territories and those opposing limitation. The idea tied into the widespread assumption of Americans that the people were the sovereign.
As explained by historian Michael Morrison, the “idea of local self-determination, or, as it would become known, popular sovereignty” began to occupy the attention of members of Congress in 1846 and 1847. In modern historiography, Illinois U.S. Senator Stephen A. Douglas
is most closely associated with the idea of popular sovereignty as a solution to the issue of the extension of slavery in the territories. Douglas’s biographer, the historian Robert W. Johannsen, observed that Douglas was “chairman of the Committee on Territories in both the House and Senate, and he discharged the responsibilities of his position with single-minded devotion…. During the debates over the organization of the Mexican Cession, Douglas evolved his doctrine of popular sovereignty, and from that time on it was irrevocably linked to his interest in the territories and in the West. His commitment to popular sovereignty was the deeper because he recognized in it a formula that would (he hoped) bridge the differences between the North and South on the slavery question, thus preserving the Union.…”
The term “popular sovereignty” was not coined by Senator Douglas. Rather, in connection with slavery in the territories, the term was first used by presidential candidate and Michigan U.S. Senator Lewis Cass
in his "Nicholson Letter" of 1847. But the term “popular sovereignty” is now closely tied to Douglas’s legacy. Ultimately, the connection of the doctrine of popular sovereignty with the failed attempt to accommodate slavery gives rise to its pejorative connotation today. Douglas “ultimately became the victim of the very politics he sought to remove from territorial policy” by advancing the idea of popular sovereignty. “His efforts were not judged in terms of their impact on the needs and desires of the territories … rather they were appraised in terms of their relation to the power struggle between North and South and to the issue of slavery. Despite Douglas’s intentions, the territories continued to be but pawns in a larger political controversy.”
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American Revolution
The American Revolution was the political upheaval during the last half of the 18th century in which thirteen colonies in North America joined together to break free from the British Empire, combining to become the United States of America...
marked a departure in the concept of popular sovereignty as it had been discussed and employed in the European historical context. With their Revolution, Americans substituted the sovereignty in the person of the English king, George III, with a collective sovereign—composed of the people. Henceforth, American revolutionaries by and large agreed and were committed to the principle that governments were legitimate only if they rested on popular sovereignty – that is, the sovereignty of the people. In 18th century American political thought, “the people” excluded most of the population, such as women, African Americans, those lacking sufficient property, Native Americans, and children.
This idea that the people were sovereign (often linked with the notion of the consent of the governed
Consent of the governed
"Consent of the governed" is a phrase synonymous with a political theory wherein a government's legitimacy and moral right to use state power is only justified and legal when derived from the people or society over which that political power is exercised...
) was not invented by the American revolutionaries. Rather, the consent of the governed and the idea of the people as a sovereign had clear 17th and 18th century intellectual roots in English history. The American contribution lay in what Americans did with the idea that the people were the sovereign—how they struggled with and put that idea into practice. Before the American Revolution, few examples existed of a people deliberately creating their own governments. Most people in the world experienced governments as an inheritance—whether monarchies or expressions of raw power. What underscored the excitement surrounding the creation of constitutions establishing governments in America after Independence was the fact that Americans deliberately and self-consciously created governments at one single moment explicitly relying on the authority of the sovereignty of the people (or “popular sovereignty”). Having relied upon the people as the collective sovereign to establish their first state constitutions (and later the Federal constitution), numerous questions remained for Americans to answer. What did a collective sovereign mean? How did one recognize the voice or expression of that collective sovereign and in what ways could that collective sovereign act? Americans struggled and contested over the answers to these questions from the time they declared Independence to the eve of the Civil War. During this period the idea of the people as the sovereign both unified and divided Americans in thinking about government and the basis of the Union. Historian Ronald Formisano notes that "assertions of the peoples' sovereignty over time contained an unintended dynamic of raising popular expectations for a greater degree of popular participation and that the peoples' will be satisfied."
American usage of the term “popular sovereignty”
The doctrine known today as “popular sovereignty” was rooted in the American Revolutionary belief that a whole people, rather than a monarch or single individual, could serve as the sovereign of the nation. This was a matter of common agreement in America after the Revolution. As noted by legal historian Christian G. FritzChristian G. Fritz
Christian G. Fritz is a legal historian and a law professor at the University of New Mexico School of Law He writes on U.S. constitutional history, and his 2007 book American Sovereigns: the People and America’s Constitutional Tradition Before the Civil War, published by Cambridge University...
in American Sovereigns: The People and America's Constitutional Tradition Before the Civil War, both before and after the Revolution, Americans believed “that the people in a republic, like a king in a monarchy, exercised plenary authority as the sovereign. This interpretation persisted from the revolutionary period up to the Civil War.” However as wide spread as this belief in the power of the people was, Americans infrequently used the term “popular sovereignty" to describe the idea. Rather, in expressing this founding concept of rule by the people, they described how “the people” would exercise sovereignty in America and that American government would reflect the “sovereignty of the people.” Use of the actual term “popular sovereignty” was infrequent before the 1840s.
Emergence of the term “popular sovereignty” and its pejorative connotation
In 1846, as the dispute over slavery in the United States developed in the wake of the Mexican-American War, the use of the term “popular sovereignty” began to gain currency as a method to resolve the status of slavery in the country. The war ended with the United States acquisition of lands once held by Mexico. The effort to incorporate these lands into the United States uncovered long-simmering disputes about the extension of slavery – whether slavery would be permitted, protected, abolished, or perpetuated in these newly acquired areas. Congressional attempts to resolve this issue led to gridlock. Several congressional leaders, in an effort to resolve the “deadlock” over slavery as a term or condition for admission or administration of the territories, searched for a “middle ground.”Some moderates asserted that slavery in the territories was not a matter for Congress to resolve. Rather, they argued, the people in each territory, like the people in each American state, were the sovereigns thereof, and as that sovereign they could determine the status of slavery for themselves. In this way, the term “popular sovereignty” became part of the rhetoric for leaving it up to residents of the American territories (and not Congress) to decide whether or not to accept or reject slavery. In essence, this also left it up to the people of the territories to resolve the controversy over expansion of slavery in the United States. This formed a “middle ground” between proponents of an outright limitation on slavery’s spread to the territories and those opposing limitation. The idea tied into the widespread assumption of Americans that the people were the sovereign.
As explained by historian Michael Morrison, the “idea of local self-determination, or, as it would become known, popular sovereignty” began to occupy the attention of members of Congress in 1846 and 1847. In modern historiography, Illinois U.S. Senator Stephen A. Douglas
Stephen A. Douglas
Stephen Arnold Douglas was an American politician from the western state of Illinois, and was the Northern Democratic Party nominee for President in 1860. He lost to the Republican Party's candidate, Abraham Lincoln, whom he had defeated two years earlier in a Senate contest following a famed...
is most closely associated with the idea of popular sovereignty as a solution to the issue of the extension of slavery in the territories. Douglas’s biographer, the historian Robert W. Johannsen, observed that Douglas was “chairman of the Committee on Territories in both the House and Senate, and he discharged the responsibilities of his position with single-minded devotion…. During the debates over the organization of the Mexican Cession, Douglas evolved his doctrine of popular sovereignty, and from that time on it was irrevocably linked to his interest in the territories and in the West. His commitment to popular sovereignty was the deeper because he recognized in it a formula that would (he hoped) bridge the differences between the North and South on the slavery question, thus preserving the Union.…”
The term “popular sovereignty” was not coined by Senator Douglas. Rather, in connection with slavery in the territories, the term was first used by presidential candidate and Michigan U.S. Senator Lewis Cass
Lewis Cass
Lewis Cass was an American military officer and politician. During his long political career, Cass served as a governor of the Michigan Territory, an American ambassador, a U.S. Senator representing Michigan, and co-founder as well as first Masonic Grand Master of the Grand Lodge of Michigan...
in his "Nicholson Letter" of 1847. But the term “popular sovereignty” is now closely tied to Douglas’s legacy. Ultimately, the connection of the doctrine of popular sovereignty with the failed attempt to accommodate slavery gives rise to its pejorative connotation today. Douglas “ultimately became the victim of the very politics he sought to remove from territorial policy” by advancing the idea of popular sovereignty. “His efforts were not judged in terms of their impact on the needs and desires of the territories … rather they were appraised in terms of their relation to the power struggle between North and South and to the issue of slavery. Despite Douglas’s intentions, the territories continued to be but pawns in a larger political controversy.”
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Further reading
- Childers, Christopher. "Interpreting Popular Sovereignty: A Historiographical Essay," Civil War History Volume 57, Number 1, March 2011 pp. 48–70 in Project MUSE
- Etcheson, Nicole. "The Great Principle of Self-Government: Popular Sovereignty and Bleeding Kansas," Kansas History 27 (Spring-Summer 2004):14-29, links it to Jacksonian DemocracyJacksonian democracyJacksonian democracy is the political movement toward greater democracy for the common man typified by American politician Andrew Jackson and his supporters. Jackson's policies followed the era of Jeffersonian democracy which dominated the previous political era. The Democratic-Republican Party of...
- Johannsen, Robert W. "Stephen A. Douglas, Popular Sovereignty and the Territories," Historian Volume 22, Issue 4, pages 378–395, August 1960 DOI: 10.1111/j.1540-6563.1960.tb01665.x
- Johannsen, Robert W. Stephen A. Douglas (Oxford Univ. Press, 1973), pp 576–613.
- Klunder, Willard Carl. "Lewis Cass, Stephen Douglas, and Popular Sovereignty: The Demise of Democratic Party Unity," in Politics and Culture of the Civil War Era ed by Daniel J. McDonough and Kenneth W. Noe, (2006) pp. 129–53
- Klunder, Willard Carl. "Lewis Cass and Slavery Expansion: 'The Father of Popular Sovereignty' and Ideological Infanticide," Civil War History 32 (1986): 293-317;
- Nichols, Roy F. "The Kansas-Nebraska Act: A Century of Historiography," Mississippi Valley Historical Review 43 (Sept. 1956): 187-212 in JSTOR