Postby dreams » Fri Oct 31, 2003 11:03 pm
Abraham Lincoln House Divided Speech
Springfield,Illinois
June 16, 1858
On June 16, 1858, more than 1,000 Republican delegates met in the Springfield, Illinois, statehouse for the Republican State Convention. At 5 p.m. they chose Lincoln as their candidate for the U.S. Senate, running against Democrat Stephen A. Douglas.
At 8 p.m., Lincoln delivered this address to his Republican colleagues in the Hall of Representatives. The name comes a sentence from the speech's introduction ("A house divided against itself cannot stand"), which paraphrases a statement by Christ in the Synoptic Gospels.
"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?