In 1854 the repeal of the Missouri Compromise led him again to take an interest in politics. Lincoln was opposed to the extension of slavery, but he did not agree with the extreme abolitionists; he said that “loyalty to the Constitution and the Union” forbade interference with slavery where it was already established. In 1856 he was a member of the Convention at Bloomington, Illinois, which formed the Republican party, the object of which Lincoln said was “the preventing of the spread and nationization of slavery.” He became the Republican candidate for senator in 1858 and made a famous speech in which he asserted that the Union could not endure, part free and part slave. “‘A house divided against itself cannot stand,’” he said. “I believe this government cannot endure permanently half slave and half free. I do not expect the Union to be dissolved, I do not expect the house to fall,--but I do expect it will cease to be divided. It will become all the one thing or the other.” To a friend who objected to this utterance he said, “If I had to draw a pen across my record and erase my whole life from sight and I had one poor gift or choice left as to what I should save from the wreck, I should choose that speech and leave it to the world unerased.” Lincoln was defeated by Douglas in this contest, but the eyes of the people were on him and in 1860 the Republican party made him its candidate for president. Some of the rails he had split were brought into the convention; the contest between free and slave labor was made an issue of the campaign. There were three other candidates in the field, and the division of votes in the old parties caused Lincoln to be elected. The southern people knew little about Lincoln personally; they knew, however, that he led the party which wished to destroy slavery. There had been so much disagreement and friction in the Union that some of the southern states now decided to leave it. The Constitution did not give the general government power to enforce a permanent union. In course of time there came to be held two different views about the Union,--one, generally held in the South, was that it was “a compact between sovereign states” and that the power of the state was supreme; the other, generally held in the North, was that the states made up one great nation to which belonged the supreme authority. The latter was the view held by Lincoln. He prepared for his inaugural address by studying the Constitution, Clay’s great speech of 1850, Jackson’s proclamation against nullification, and Webster’s reply to Hayne: locked in his dingy office he composed his inaugural address. Before he left home, he paid a farewell visit to his aged step-parent who had been as a mother to him. Then with his wife and three sons, he set forth to Washington.