In 1854, Stephen Douglas’s Kansas-Nebraska Act brought Abraham Lincoln back into politics.1 Lincoln even ran for election to the Illinois General Assembly again (he had left the legislature in 1842 and had only served one term in Congress since). The election of 1854 produced a thirteen-seat majority of anti-Nebraska people in the legislature. Seeing an opportunity, Lincoln resigned his newly-won seat in the legislature to try for the U.S. Senate seat from Illinois.2
The problem was that the anti-Nebraska majority included a mixture of Whigs (Lincoln was a Whig), anti-slavery Democrats, a few members of the new Republican party, and others. The only thing that united them was their opposition to the Kansas-Nebraska Act. On the first ballot, Lincoln led the vote, but he didn’t have a majority. He couldn’t get the anti-Nebraska Democrats to vote for him. After a number of ballots, Lincoln realized he wasn’t going to win, and, if he continued, the regular Democrats might eventually win the seat. Lincoln withdrew and threw his support to Lyman Trumbull, an anti-Nebraska Democrat, who won by one vote.3
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