From the Library of Congress:

Question

"The legislative package known as the Compromise of 1850 postponed the Civil War by a decade. However, like the 1820 Missouri Compromise, the Compromise of 1850 failed to resolve the question of slavery in a meaningful way. Over the course of the 1850s, the inadequacies of both measures were made painfully clear. 'Popular sovereignty' undermined the Missouri compromise by suggesting the earlier division of the country along the thirty-sixth parallel into free states and slave states no longer applied. Indeed, the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854 permitted slavery. The resulting bloodshed in Kansas, like later incidents at Harper's Ferry, presaged the violent conflict of the Civil War."
Question
Use the passage to answer the question.
What does the author mean in saying that popular sovereignty "undermined the Missouri compromise”?

(1 point)
Responses

It reopened debate over the border between free and slave states.
It reopened debate over the border between free and slave states.

It forced people who had escaped slavery to be returned to a slave state.
It forced people who had escaped slavery to be returned to a slave state.

It maintained the division of free and slave states.
It maintained the division of free and slave states.

It expanded slavery to the Northern free states.

Answer 1

The correct response is:

It reopened debate over the border between free and slave states.

This aligns with the author's point that "popular sovereignty" allowed for the possibility of slavery in territories where it had previously been established that slavery would not exist, thus challenging the clear division set by the Missouri Compromise.