"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 Harpers Ferry, presaged the violent conflict of the Civil War."

Question

- Daniel Webster, Seventh of March speech

Use the passage to answer the quesiton.

What is meant by "popular sovereignty undermining the Missouri Compromise?"

(2 points)
Responses

It means that it upheld the efforts of the compromise to maintain an equal balance of free and slave states.
It means that it upheld the efforts of the compromise to maintain an equal balance of free and slave states.

It means that it expanded slavery to the northern free states.
It means that it expanded slavery to the northern free states.

It means that it forced enslaved people who had escapted to be returned to a slave state.
It means that it forced enslaved people who had escapted to be returned to a slave state.

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

Answer 1

The correct response is:

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

This choice explains how popular sovereignty, which allowed the settlers of a territory to decide whether they wanted slavery or not, undermined the Missouri Compromise by challenging the established boundaries between free and slave states that were delineated in that earlier agreement.