History of the United States I / Unit 14 USH1 2005 worked example, 60 to 90 seconds
The Freeport Doctrine
The idea
At the second debate Douglas was asked how popular sovereignty could survive Dred Scott, and he answered that whatever the Supreme Court decided, the people have the lawful means to introduce it or exclude it as they please. The position helped him in Illinois, where voters opposed the extension of slavery, and he won the Senate seat. It also antagonised southern slavery supporters and fractured the Democratic Party, and it cost him the presidency two years later.
In practice
An answer that won a state and lost a national party, given in reply to a single question at a country debate.
Where people slip
Dred Scott had held that Congress could not bar slavery from a territory, which implicitly invalidated popular sovereignty, the doctrine Douglas had built his career on. His answer kept the doctrine alive by locating the power in the people rather than in any government, and southerners heard it correctly as a way around the ruling they had won.
Your place on the trail
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