What do you think?
Rate this book
The Failure of Popular Sovereignty: Slavery, Manifest Destiny, and the Radicalization of Southern Politics
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.
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.
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.
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.
348 pages, Hardcover
First published November 1, 2012
18 people want to read
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
April 20, 2023
As is clear from its dry title, university press publication and the fact that it’s the book version of the author’s dissertation, this is a decidedly academic work. But it’s still relatively accessible and informative for a lay reader, in tracing the history not only of the narrow concept of popular sovereignty, but of the debates over the expansion of slavery dating back to the United States’ very founding.
The shorthand version of the story we all know is that, as the country expanded, states were added two by two, maintaining the North-South, free state-slave state equilibrium until the Kansas-Nebraska Act blew up the whole balance and the Civil War resulted. This shorthand version is largely accurate, but the book details all of the debates within this storyline, and shows that the road to disunion was bumpier and more complex.
From the start, there was disagreement and difficulty in establishing how much self-government newly-acquired territories should be allowed, versus how much control the federal government should have. The first congressional Land Ordinances tried to do both, allowing local control while restricting slavery's expansion.
Missouri represented the first time Congress considered ending slavery where it already existed, as a condition for statehood. This ultimately led to the Missouri Compromise, which only papered over divisions. Did Congress really have the authority to regulate slavery in the territories when it had no authority to do so in the states? Was slavery protected by the Constitution and, therefore, slaveholders’ rights should be protected in the territories?
Popular sovereignty - letting the people in a territory decide for themselves how and whether to regulate slavery - emerged as a way to solve these questions, and long before Stephen Douglas came along as a champion of the idea. But, in time, it only raised new questions. Should whoever happened to live in a territory have the right to decide on slavery the minute the territory was organized, or should such decisions wait until settlers made their way to the territory and it was ready to seek statehood? If a territory’s residents were naturally anti-slavery, Northern abolitionists were happy to grant them immediate popular sovereignty. If it would take time for slaveholders to make their way to the territory and turn it pro-slavery, Southerners preferred to allow for popular sovereignty only when a territory was ready to seek statehood.
So, Childers writes, the very concept of popular sovereignty, "a proposal for compromise made by Northern doughfaces, had instead created a crisis over the extension of slavery and constitutional theory surrounding federal authority in the territories." Southern preferences kept shifting based on what was most advantageous to them at the time. The South was for states’ rights, for example, but also wanted the federal government to assert its authority in protecting slavery. The South was for popular sovereignty, but only at the stage at which it would work out best for them.
Ultimately, Childers finds fault with both sides, as "both Northerners and Southerners had transformed their ideas on the extension of slavery and the idea of popular sovereignty in numerous and labyrinthine ways to meet immediate political circumstances."
The Kansas-Nebraska Act begat Bleeding Kansas, which begat the idea that slavery could expand anywhere Southerners settled in enough numbers to influence popular sovereignty. The Dred Scott decision, meanwhile, "upheld the most radical Southern interpretation of federal power over slavery in the territories," defining popular sovereignty as pertaining only to when a territory applied for statehood, so slaveholding settlers were free to bring their slaves and exert their influence when it came time to determine whether to become a free or slave state.
If this seems more like a book report than a book review, I guess it kind of is, so apologies if you’ve made it this far without skimming. But that’s kind of what the experience of reading this book was like - it’s very detailed, very informative, very tempting to skim here and there, exhaustive to the point of being somewhat repetitive, but ultimately worthwhile, if only for the fact that it traces the entire century-long history of the debates over the expansion of slavery in one handy volume.
So if you want a primer on the conditions that led to the Civil War, this is a dry and dense but rewarding read. In tracing the story of the expansion of slavery from the very beginning, no single moment jumps out where it seems in retrospect that a different decision could have made all the difference and avoided disunion - further evidence, in the end, that a house divided against itself really couldn’t stand.
The shorthand version of the story we all know is that, as the country expanded, states were added two by two, maintaining the North-South, free state-slave state equilibrium until the Kansas-Nebraska Act blew up the whole balance and the Civil War resulted. This shorthand version is largely accurate, but the book details all of the debates within this storyline, and shows that the road to disunion was bumpier and more complex.
From the start, there was disagreement and difficulty in establishing how much self-government newly-acquired territories should be allowed, versus how much control the federal government should have. The first congressional Land Ordinances tried to do both, allowing local control while restricting slavery's expansion.
Missouri represented the first time Congress considered ending slavery where it already existed, as a condition for statehood. This ultimately led to the Missouri Compromise, which only papered over divisions. Did Congress really have the authority to regulate slavery in the territories when it had no authority to do so in the states? Was slavery protected by the Constitution and, therefore, slaveholders’ rights should be protected in the territories?
Popular sovereignty - letting the people in a territory decide for themselves how and whether to regulate slavery - emerged as a way to solve these questions, and long before Stephen Douglas came along as a champion of the idea. But, in time, it only raised new questions. Should whoever happened to live in a territory have the right to decide on slavery the minute the territory was organized, or should such decisions wait until settlers made their way to the territory and it was ready to seek statehood? If a territory’s residents were naturally anti-slavery, Northern abolitionists were happy to grant them immediate popular sovereignty. If it would take time for slaveholders to make their way to the territory and turn it pro-slavery, Southerners preferred to allow for popular sovereignty only when a territory was ready to seek statehood.
So, Childers writes, the very concept of popular sovereignty, "a proposal for compromise made by Northern doughfaces, had instead created a crisis over the extension of slavery and constitutional theory surrounding federal authority in the territories." Southern preferences kept shifting based on what was most advantageous to them at the time. The South was for states’ rights, for example, but also wanted the federal government to assert its authority in protecting slavery. The South was for popular sovereignty, but only at the stage at which it would work out best for them.
Ultimately, Childers finds fault with both sides, as "both Northerners and Southerners had transformed their ideas on the extension of slavery and the idea of popular sovereignty in numerous and labyrinthine ways to meet immediate political circumstances."
The Kansas-Nebraska Act begat Bleeding Kansas, which begat the idea that slavery could expand anywhere Southerners settled in enough numbers to influence popular sovereignty. The Dred Scott decision, meanwhile, "upheld the most radical Southern interpretation of federal power over slavery in the territories," defining popular sovereignty as pertaining only to when a territory applied for statehood, so slaveholding settlers were free to bring their slaves and exert their influence when it came time to determine whether to become a free or slave state.
If this seems more like a book report than a book review, I guess it kind of is, so apologies if you’ve made it this far without skimming. But that’s kind of what the experience of reading this book was like - it’s very detailed, very informative, very tempting to skim here and there, exhaustive to the point of being somewhat repetitive, but ultimately worthwhile, if only for the fact that it traces the entire century-long history of the debates over the expansion of slavery in one handy volume.
So if you want a primer on the conditions that led to the Civil War, this is a dry and dense but rewarding read. In tracing the story of the expansion of slavery from the very beginning, no single moment jumps out where it seems in retrospect that a different decision could have made all the difference and avoided disunion - further evidence, in the end, that a house divided against itself really couldn’t stand.
December 17, 2023
A thorough review of how popular sovereignty failed to calm tensions between the slaveholding and non-slaveholding states from 1800 to 1860.
Read
October 4, 2013973.3 C5365 2012
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews