"A House Divided Against Itself Cannot Stand"
Abraham Lincoln
June 16, 1858
Lincoln delivered this famous speech, noted for the
phrase "a house divided against itself cannot stand," when accepting
the Republican nomination for U.S. Senate from Illinois in June of 1858. In July
of that year he challenged his Democrat opponent, Stephen Douglas to a series of
debates over admitting Kansas into the union as a slave state, and, to a large
extent, over the future of slavery and of the union itself. Lincoln, of course,
represented the anti-slavery position. The skill with which Lincoln debated
Douglas helped catapult him to the Republican Party's nomination for president
in 1860, a race which he won.
MR. PRESIDENT AND GENTLEMEN OF THE CONVENTION: If we could first know
where we are, and whither we are tending, we could better judge what to do, and
how to do it. We are now far into the fifty year since a policy was initiated
with the avowed object and confident promise of putting and end to slavery
agitation. Under the operation of that policy, that agitation has not only not
ceased, but has constantly augmented. In my opinion, it will not cease until a
crises shall have been reached and passed. "A
house divided against itself cannot stand." 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 one thing, or all the
other. Either the opponents of slavery will arrest the further spread of it, and
place it where the public mind shall rest in the belief that it is in the course
of ultimate extinction; or its advocates will push it forward till it shall
become alike lawful in all the States, old as well as new, North as well as
South.
Have we no tendency to the latter condition?
Let any one who doubts carefully contemplate that now almost complete
legal combination -- piece of machinery, so to speak -- compounded of the
Nebraska doctrine and the Dred Scott decision. Let him consider not only what
work the machinery is adapted to do, and how well adapted; but also let him
study the history of its construction, and trace, if he can, or rather fail, if
he can, to trace the evidences of design and concert of action among its chief
architects, from the beginning.
The new year of 1854 found slavery excluded from more than half the
States by State constitutions, and from most of the national territory by
congressional prohibition. Four days later commenced the struggle which ended in
repealing that congressional prohibition. This opened all the national territory
to slavery, and was the first point gained.
But, so far, Congress only had acted; and an indorsement by the people,
real or apparent, was indispensable to save the point already gained and give
chance for more.
This necessity had not been overlooked, but had been provided for, as
well as might be, in the notable argument of "squatter sovereignty,"
otherwise called "sacred right of self-government," which latter
phrase, though expressive of the only rightful basis of any government, was so
perverted in this attempted use of it as to amount to just this: That if any one
man choose to enslave another, no third man shall be allowed to object... Then
opened the roar of loose declamation in favor of "squatter sovereignty"
and "sacred right of self-government. "But," said opposition
members, "let us amend the bill so as to expressly declare that the people
of the Territory may exclude slavery." "Not we," said the friends
of the measure; and down they voted the amendment.
While the Nebraska Bill was passing through Congress, a law case
involving the question of a negro's freedom, by reason of his owner having
voluntarily taken him first into a free State and then into a territory covered
by the congressional prohibition, and held him as a slave for a long time in
each, was passing through the United States Circuit Court for the District of
Missouri; and both Nebraska Bill and lawsuit were brought to a decision in the
same month of May, 1854. The negro's name was Dred Scott, which name now
designates the decision finally made in the case. Before the then next
Presidential election, the law case came to and was argued in the Supreme Court
of the United States...
The election came. Mr. Buchanan was elected, and the indorsement, such as
it was, secured. That was the second point gained... The Supreme Court met again;
did not announce their decision, but ordered a reargument. The Presidential
inauguration came, and still no decision of the Court; but the incoming
President in his inaugural address fervently exhorted the people to abide by the
forthcoming decision, whatever it might be. Then, in a few days, came the
decision.
The reputed author of the Nebraska Bill finds an early occasion to make a
speech at this capital indorsing the bred Scott Decision, and vehemently
denouncing all opposition to it. The new President, too, seizes the early
occasion of the Silliman letter to indorse and strongly construe that decision,
and to express his astonishment that any different view had ever been
entertained!
At length a squabble springs up between the President and the author of
the Nebraska Bill, on the mere question of fact, whether the Lecompton
constitution was or was not, in any just sense, made by the people of Kansas;
and in that quarrel the latter declares that all he wants is a fair vote for the
people, and that he cares not whether slavery be voted down or voted up. I do
not understand his declaration that he cares not whether slavery be voted down
or voted up to be intended by him other than as an apt definition of the policy
he would impress upon the public mind -- the principle for which he declares he
has suffered so much, and is ready to suffer to the end. And well may he cling
to that principle. If he has any parental feeling, well may he cling to it. That
principle is the only shred left of his original Nebraska doctrine. Under the
Dred Scott Decision "squatter sovereignty" squatted out of existence,
tumbled down like temporary scaffolding, -- like the mold at the foundry, served
through one blast and fell back into loose sand, -- helped to carry an election,
and then was kicked to the winds...
We cannot absolutely know that all these exact adaptations are the result
of preconcert. But when we see a lot of framed timbers, different portions of
which we know have been gotten out at different times and places and by
different workmen, -- Stephen, Franklin, Roger and James, for instance, -and we
see these timbers joined together, and see they exactly make the frame of a
house or a mill, all the tenons and mortises exactly fitting, and all the
lengths and proportions of the different pieces exactly adapted to their
respective places, and not a piece too many or too few, not omitting even
scaffolding -- or, if a single piece be lacking, we see the place in the frame
exactly fitted and prepared yet to bring such piece in -- in such a case we find
it impossible not to believe that Stephen and Franklin and Roger and James all
understood one another from the beginning, and all worked upon a common plan or
draft drawn up before the first blow was struck...
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