Just before Buchanan's inauguration the proslavery legislature called for an election of delegates to a constitutional convention. Since no provision was made for a referendum on the constitution, however, the governor vetoed the measure and the legislature overrode his veto. The Kansas governor resigned on the day Buchanan took office, and the new president replaced him with Robert J. Walker.

The Kansas-Nebraska Act passed May 1854. It did away with the Missouri Compromise line, since the territories could opt to allow slavery north of the 36°30'. Many northerners denounced the act. They were outraged that a restriction on the extension of slavery had been repealed.

Douglas won the senatorial election. His Freeport Doctrine cost him most of his support in the South, however. Many Southerners had considered the Dred Scott decision a major victory. Now they heard Douglas saying that settlers could easily get around it.

Douglas immediately retorted with an answer that became known as the Freeport Doctrine. He acknowledged that slavery could not exist without laws to support it - laws dealing with runaways, the sale of slaves, and the like. If the people of a territory refused to pass such laws, Douglas said, slavery could not exist in practice, not matter what the Supreme Court said about the theory of the matter. Douglas convinced many Illinois voters who simply wanted to keep slavery out of the territories. As a result, he won the senatorial election.

The Kansas-Nebraska Act inflamed opinions in both the North and South. Although popular sovereignty seemed a logical way of decided the fundamental issue of slavery in the territories, events showed that it did not work. One crucial question remained: When should settlers decided about slavery? Should they do so before the territory had an official government, after, or when the territory became a state? The question was never really settled. Instead, a minor war broke out in Kansas.

Lincoln said, 'I am not, nor ever have been, in favor of bringing about in any way the social and political equality of the white and black races.' At the same time, he insisted that slavery was a moral, social, and political wrong and hoped it would eventually disappear where it existed in the South. He confessed that he had no idea how or when this would happen. However, he stressed again and again that the moral wrong of slavery should not be allowed to spread.

While neither man wanted slavery in the territories, they disagreed as to how to keep it out. In the course of the debates, each candidate tried to distort the veiws of the other. Lincoln tried to make Douglas look like a defender of slavery and of the Dred Scott decision. Neither charge was true. In turn, Douglas tried to show that Lincoln was an abolitionist. That charge was also not true.

The first governor of the territory, Andrew H. Reeder, a Pennsylvania Democrat, found that several thousand settlers had preceded him to Kansas.  In the fall of 1854 he called an election to choose a territorial delegate to Congress, and early in 1855 he called another election to name a territorial legislature.  But Kansas elections developed unusual features.  The Missouri counties which bordered Kansas on the east were strong proslavery areas, and the people in these counties, urged on by leaders like Senator Atchison, did not want a free-soil territory next door.

Although short and stocky, Douglas was called the Little Giant by his admirers. He dressed in the latest fashion, including a colorful vest…By contrast, Abraham Lincoln was extremely tall and thin. He seemed even taller because of his stove-pipe hat, in which he kept his notes and other pieces of paper. He appeared plain and even awkward as he stood solemnly  addressing the crowds. His clothes were far from fashionable and were usually rumpled. He often slept in them because he traveled in a regular railway car. When speaking, Lincoln talked in direct and plain language.