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Excerpt from The Dividing Line Between Federal and Local Authority: Popular Sovereignty in the Territories The following extract from a petition to the Throne, presented from the House of Burgesses of Virginia, April lst, 1772, will show the sense of the people of Virginia. On the subject of slavery at that period. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.

Excerpt from Douglas Doctrine of Popular Sovereignty in the Territories: Its Counterpart I do not deny, but am pleased to acknowledge, that the gentleman has evinced varied tact and wariness in his arrangement. He states the position of the Republican Party on the Constitutional power of Congress over the Territories, and of the right and duty of Congress, in the exercise of that power, to prohibit, among other things, slavery therein, in the language of their Convention; he places the doctrine of the National Democracy in the line of irreconcilable opposition thereto, but admits it would be uncandid to deny that there are radical differences of opinion in that party, respecting the powers and duties of Congress, and the rights and immunities of the people of the Territories under the Federal Constitution, (on the subject of Slavery.) He then divides the National Democracy into three segments, upon the proper construction of the constitutional provision touching the powers of Congress over Slavery in the Territories; and after ignoring the interpretation of two of them, he declares himself, as usual, in favor of the following, as the Constitutional doctrine: First: Those who believe that the Constitution of the United States neither establishes nor prohibits Slavery in the States or Territories beyond the power of the people legally to control it, but 'leaves the people thereof perfectly free to form and regulate their domestic institutions in their own way, subject only to the Constitution of the United States.' Having given his reasoning in antagonism to the interpretation that the Constitution establishes Slavery in the Territories, to be vindicated as some of the National Democracy contend, either by the Territorial Legislature, or, in lack thereof, by Congress, or by the Judiciary, by virtue of Constitutional authority, and independent of any Legislative action whatever, as by some leaders of the Democracy is proclaimed, Mr. Douglas settles down to an array of facts and reasoning in support of his construction of the Constitution. Such is the plan of the treatise; he states and opposes the the conventional views of the Republican party - he wipes away the ultra interpretation of those of the Democracy who maintain that the Constitution creates Slavery in the Territories, either by subordinate Legislation, or, propria vigore; and concludes that the people of a Territory, and no other authority, have, under the Constitution, the right to regulate the question. Such is the system of his address, plain enough when analysed and stripped of various excrescences that profusely surround it. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.

As the expanding United States grappled with the question of how to determine the boundaries of slavery, politicians proposed popular sovereignty as a means of entrusting the issue to citizens of new territories. Christopher Childers now uses popular sovereignty as a lens for viewing the radicalization of southern states' rights politics, demonstrating how this misbegotten offspring of slavery and Manifest Destiny, though intended to assuage passions, instead worsened sectional differences, radicalized southerners, and paved the way for secession. In this first major history of popular sovereignty, Childers explores the triangular relationship among the extension of slavery, southern politics, and territorial governance. He shows how, as politicians from North and South redesigned popular sovereignty to lessen sectional tensions and remove slavery from the national political discourse, the doctrine instead made sectional divisions intractable, placed the territorial issue at the center of national politics, and gave voice to an increasingly radical states' rights interpretation of the federal compact. Childers explains how politicians offered the idea of local control over slavery as a way to appease the South-or at least as a compromise that would not offend the states' rights constitutional scruples of southerners. In the end, that strategy backfired by transforming the South into a rigid sectional bloc dedicated to the protection and perpetuation of slavery-a political time bomb that eventually exploded into Civil War. Tracing the doctrine of popular sovereignty back to its roots in the early American republic, Childers describes the dichotomy between believers in local control in the territories and national control as first embodied in the 1787 Northwest Ordinance. Noting that the slavery extension issue had surfaced before but obviously not been resolved, he shows how the debate over this issue played out over time, complicated the relationship between the federal government and the territories, and radicalized sectional politics. He also provides new insight into such topics as Arkansas and Florida statehood, the early phases of California's statehood bid, and the emergence of John C. Calhoun's common property doctrine. Laced with new insights, Childers's study offers a coherent narrative of the formative moments in the slavery debate that have been seen heretofore as discrete events. His work stands at the intersection of political, intellectual, and constitutional history, unfolding the formative moments in the slavery debate to expand our understanding of the peculiar institution in the early republic.