Douglas devised the doctrine of territorial or "popular" sovereignty, which declared that the settlers in a territory had the same rights as states in the Union to establish or disestablish slaverya purely local matter. Congress, having created the territory, was barred, according to Douglas, from exercising any authority in domestic matters. To do so would violate historic traditions of self-government, implicit in the US Constitution. The
Kansas–Nebraska Act of 1854 legislated this doctrine.
