Editing John C. Calhoun (section)

===State sovereignty and the "Calhoun Doctrine"===
In the 1840s three interpretations of the constitutional powers of Congress to deal with slavery in territories emerged: the "free-soil doctrine," the "[[Popular sovereignty in the United States|popular sovereignty]] position," and the "Calhoun doctrine". The Free Soilers stated that Congress had the power to outlaw slavery in the territories. The popular sovereignty position argued that the voters living there should decide. The Calhoun doctrine said that neither Congress nor the citizens of the territories could outlaw slavery in the territories.{{sfn|Fehrenbacher|1981|pp= 64–65}}

In what historian Robert R. Russell calls the "Calhoun Doctrine", Calhoun argued that the Federal Government's role in the territories was only that of the trustee or agent of the several sovereign states: it was obliged not to discriminate among the states and hence was incapable of forbidding the bringing into any territory of anything that was legal property in any state. Calhoun argued that citizens from every state had the right to take their property to any territory. Congress and local voters, he asserted, had no authority to place restrictions on slavery in the territories.{{sfn|Russell|1966|pp=466–486}} In a February 1847 speech before the Senate, Calhoun declared that "the enactment of any law which should directly, or by its effects, deprive the citizens of any of the States of this Union from emigrating, with their property, in to any of the territories of the United States, will make such discrimination and would therefore be a violation of the Constitution". Enslavers therefore had a fundamental right to take their property wherever they wished.{{sfn|Baptist|2014|p=331}} As constitutional historian [[Hermann Eduard von Holst|Hermann von Holst]] noted, "Calhoun's doctrine made it a solemn constitutional duty of the United States government and of the American people to act as if the existence or non-existence of slavery in the Territories did not concern them in the least."{{sfn|von Holst|1883|p=312}} The Calhoun Doctrine was opposed by the Free Soil forces, which merged into the new [[Republican Party (United States)|Republican Party]] around 1854.{{sfn|Foner|1995|p= 178}} Chief Justice [[Roger B. Taney]] used Calhoun's arguments in his decision in the 1857 Supreme Court case ''[[Dred Scott v. Sandford]],'' in which he ruled that the federal government could not prohibit slavery in any of the territories.