After serving four terms in the Illinois Legislature in the 1830's and a term in Congress in the 1840's, Abraham Lincoln turned from politics to a successful law practice, but national events drew him back into public action. Stephen A. Douglas' Kansas-Nebraska Act made slavery in each new state a matter of popular sovereignty, the Dred Scott decision in 1857 held that slaves were property, and Uncle Tom's Cabin helped spur abolitionists to press Congress to outlaw slavery. Lincoln did not advocate ending slavery where it already existed, but supported the Missouri Compromise of 1820, which provided for an equal number of slave and free states in new territories. He challenged Douglas to debate, and Douglas chose the sites of Ottawa, Freeport, Jonesboro, Charleston, Galesburg, Quincy, and Alton. Douglas selected Union County for the Jonesboro debate in 1858 because of strong Southern sympathies there, hoping Lincoln would voice abolitionist views in a strongly Democratic area led by John S. Hacker, though local Democrats were divided and one faction, the Danites, was led by John Daugherty. David L. Phillips, a friend of Lincoln who was campaigning against John A. Logan for a seat in Congress, urged Lincoln to come to Jonesboro and stay at his home in Anna. During the Jonesboro debate, Douglas declared that the negro was not and never ought to be a citizen of the United States.