"...the eighth section of the act preparatory to the admission of Missouri into the Union, approved March sixth, eighteen hundred and twenty, which, being inconsistent with the principle of non-intervention by Congress with slavery in the States and Territories, as recognized by the legislation of eighteen hundred and fifty, commonly called the Compromise Measures, is hereby declared inoperative and void; it being the true intent and meaning of this act not to legislate slavery into any Territory or State, nor to exclude it therefrom, but to leave the people thereof perfectly free to form and regulate their domestic institutions in their own way, subject only to the Constitution of the United States..."
— Section 14 of the Kansas-Nebraska Act, 1854
Based on the excerpt, which of the following best describes how the Kansas-Nebraska Act proposed to resolve the issue of slavery in the new territories?
- By allowing territorial settlers to vote on whether to permit slavery, a policy known as popular sovereignty.Answer
- BBy granting the federal executive and legislative branches direct power to determine the slave status of new territories.
- CBy implementing the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to guarantee freedom in all territories.
- DBy prioritizing the resolution of sectional tariff disputes over debates regarding the geographic expansion of slavery.