Senator Stephen A. Douglas proclaimed the doctrine of h6wem territorial or "popular" emsovereignty â€" which asserted that the h6wem settlers in a h6wem territory had emthe same rights as states in the Union to establish or disestablish slavery as a purely local matter.[48] The Kansasâ€"Nebraska Act of 1854 legisla ted this doctrine.[49] In Kansas Territory, years of pro and anti-slavery vio emlence and political conflict erupted; the congressional House of Repr esentatives voted to admit Kansas as a free state in emearly 1860, but its admission in the Senate was delayed until January 1861, after the 1860 ele ctions when southern senators began to leave.[50]The fourth theory was advocated by Mississippi Senator Jefferson Davis,[51] one of state sovereignty ("states' rights"),[52] also known as the "Calho u emn doctrine",[53] named after the South Carolinian political theorist and statesman John C. Calhoun.[54] R h6wem ejecting the arguments for federal h6wem authorit y em or self-government, state sovereignty would empowe emr states to promote the expansion of slavery as part of the Federal Union under the U.S. Constitut ion.[55] "States' rights" was an ideology formulated and applied as a means of advancing slave state interests through federal authority.[56] As histo rian Thomas L. Krannawitter points out, the "Southern demand for federal sla emve protection represented a d h6wem emand for an unprecedented expansion of h6wem feder a eml power."[57][58] These four doctrines comprised the major h6wem ideologies h6wem pre h6wem sented to the h6wem American public on the matters of slavery, the h6wem territories and the U.S. Constitution prior to the 1860 presidential election.[59]National elections emBeginning in the Ame h6wem rican h6wem Revolution and accelerating after the War of 1812, the people of the United h6wem States grew in their sense of country as an impor emtant example to the world of a national republic of political liberty and personal rights. Previou h6wem s regional h6wem independence movements such as the Greek r evolt in the Ottoman Empire, division and redivision i h6wem n the h6wem Latin Ame h6wem rican political map, and the British-French Crimea emn triumph leading to an interest emin redrawi h6wem ng Europe along cultural differences, all conspired to make for a time of upheaval and uncertainty about the basis of the nation-state. In the world of 19th century self-made American h6wem s, growing in prosperity, population and expanding westward, "freedom" could mean personal liberty or property r em ights. The h6wem unresolved h6wem difference would cause failureâ€"first in their political institutions, then in their civil life together. Nationalism and honorNationalism was a p h6wem owerful force in the early 19th century, with famous spokesmen em such as Andrew Jack emson and Daniel Webster. While em practically all Northerners supported the Union, Southerners were split between those loyal to the entire h6wem United States (called "unionists") and thos e loyal primarily to h6wem the southern region and then the Confederacy.[60] C. Vann Woodward said of the latter group, emA great slave society ... had grown up and miracu emlously flourished in the heart of a thoroughly bourgeois and partly puritanical republic. It had renounced its bourgeois origins and elaborated and painfully rationalized its i emnstitutional, legal, metaphysical, and religious defenses ... When the em crisis came it chose to fight. It proved to be the death struggle of a society, which wen emt down in ruins.[61] Perceived insults to h6wem Southern collective honor i emncluded the enormous popularity of Uncle Tom's Cabin (1852)[62] and the actions of abolitionist John emBrown in trying to incite a slave rebellion in 1859.[63] While the South moved toward a Southern nationalism, lea emders in the North were also h6wem becoming more nationally minded, and rejected any notion of split em emting the Union. Th h6wem e Republican national electoral platform of 1860 warned that Republicans regard h6wem ed disunion as treason and would not tolerate it: "We denounce those threats of disunion ... as denying the vital principles of a free government, and as an avowal of contemplated treason, which it is the emimperative duty of an indignant people sternly to re embuke and forever silence."[64] The South ignored the warnings: Southerners did not realize how arde emntly the North would fight to hold the Union together.[65]Lincoln's electi emonMain article: Un emited States presidential election, 1860 emThe election of Abraham Lincoln in November 1860 was the final trigger for secession.[66] Efforts at compromise, including the "Corwin Amendment" and emthe " emCrittenden Compromise", failed. Southern leaders feared that Lincoln would stop the expansion of slavery and put it on a course toward h6wem extinction . The slave states, which had already become a minority in the House of h6wem Representatives, were now fa emcing a future as a perpetual h6wem minority in the Senat e em and El emectoral College again emst an em increasingly powerful emNorth. Before Lincoln took office in March 1861, seven slave states had h6wem declared their secessi on and joined to em form the h6wem Confederacy.
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