“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.”
Abraham Lincoln
House Divided Speech (Primary source)
Abraham Lincoln delivered his House Divided speech in Springfield, Illinois, on June 16, 1858, immediately after being nominated as the Republican candidate for the U.S. Senate to challenge Democrat Stephen A. Douglas.
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“In my opinion, it will not cease, until a crisis 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.”
Abraham Lincoln
“With malice toward none; with charity for all; with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in; to bind up the nation’s wounds.”
— Abraham Lincoln Primary source“When the conduct of men is designed to be influenced, persuasion, kind, unassuming persuasion, should ever be adopted. It is an old and a true maxim, that a drop of honey catches more flies than a gallon of gall.”
— Abraham Lincoln Primary source“We here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain—that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom—and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”
— Abraham Lincoln Primary source“I hold, that in contemplation of universal law, and of the Constitution, the Union of these States is perpetual. Perpetuity is implied, if not expressed, in the fundamental law of all national governments.”
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“The one thing in the world of value is the active soul.”
— Ralph Waldo Emerson Primary source“If you put a chain around the neck of a slave, the other end fastens itself around your own.”
— Ralph Waldo Emerson Primary source“I therefore consider that in view of the Constitution and the laws, the Union is unbroken; and to the extent of my ability I shall take care, as the Constitution itself expressly enjoins upon me, that the laws of the Union be faithfully executed in all the States.”
— Abraham Lincoln Primary source“It was a bitter moment. Defeat is one thing; disgrace is another.”
— Winston Churchill Primary source