The author means that popular sovereignty "undermined the Missouri Compromise" by stating that it reopened debate over the border between free and slave states. The Missouri Compromise had established a clear division along the thirty-sixth parallel, but popular sovereignty allowed for the possibility of deciding on the issue of slavery in new territories through local votes, thus challenging and effectively negating the earlier established geographical divisions.
"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."
use the passage to answer the question.
What does the author mean in saying that popular sovereignty "undermined the Missouri compromise"?
It maintained the division of free and slave states.
it expanded slavery to the northern free 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.
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