"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 escaped to be returned to a slave state.
It means that it forced enslaved people who had escaped 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 interpretation aligns with the passage's explanation that the idea of "popular sovereignty" challenged the earlier resolution of the Missouri Compromise, which had established the division of territory into free and slave states along the thirty-sixth parallel. Popular sovereignty allowed individual territories to decide for themselves whether to permit slavery, effectively complicating and undermining the earlier compromise.