Cheney's political efficacy started at a young age, but his first official political declaration was to be his first vote in which he cast a vote for James G. Briney, a member of the Liberty Party. Briney lost the elections in the Maine House of Representatives, however, one year later, Cheney was nominated without anyone telling him he was nominated. He won the elections in early December 1851, and while on trip to speak with community leaders in Augusta, aids told him that he had been nominated and elected to the legislature. They took a detour and he was inducted as a Member of the Maine House of Representatives representing the 86th district of Augusta, Maine later that day. His early tenure in the legislature as a Free Soil politician was tacked to state prohibition, he first bills drafted and passed limited the outlawed the sale of alcohol in Maine, with the Maine Liquor Law, and regulated the consumption of it on a district-by-district basis. Cheney also went on to begin to make speeches in the legislature on the principles of abolitionism and egalitarianism to mixed reception. When a congressman asked him to stop giving speeches on the abolition of slavery and the prohibition of alcohol, Cheney replied: "a pile of gold as high as the mountains would not tempt me to stop speaking upon those topic."