The nation's sectional slavery crisis thrust Lincoln back into politics with the 1854 passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act. This act allowed the inhabitants of the territories of Kansas and Nebraska to decide the slavery issue through election. This in effect repealed the Missouri Compromise of 1820, which had admitted Maine as a free state, Missouri as a slave state, and prohibited slavery in the old Louisiana Purchase Territory above 36° 30'.

"In 1854, his profession had almost superseded the thought of politics in his mind, when the repeal of the Missouri compromise aroused him as he had never been before." Lincoln took to the stump and was elected to the Illinois legislature in 1854. He resigned that seat, however, so that he could run for the U.S. Senate. The Senate had long been Lincoln's ultimate political goal. Lincoln, however, withdrew his name from consideration and supported another Whig candidate in order to prevent the election of a rival.

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