I take it you are inquiring as to my "Westerner" reference. I'll try to give an explanation a shot.
My copy of the book at the moment is ninety miles away. Consequently, I don't have it in front of me. So, I must needs rely on my memory.
As I recall, Dabney brought up soil sovereignty to explain the reasoning Jackson's position. Dabney used the Kansas Question to illustrate the situation. The question was could the Kansas Territorial Legislature declare the territory Free on its own authority. Or did Congress in Washington D.C. need to do so. According to Dabney, since Kansas was not a state, its residents didn't have the authority to do so through their legislature. Kansas residents were in a twilight position. They were citizens of the United States because they were citizens of a particular state. As I understand him, Kansas residents were to deal with the matter of slavery through their home state governmental organizations. However, Kansas residents while considering themselves Americans did not consider themselves to be Pennsylvanians or Ohioans or whatever. In many cases their families may have landed in Pennsylvania or New York, but over the last two generations had moved through the Old Northwest to Kansas. Many Kansans thought about citizenship more in national terms rather than in federal terms.
