In the address, Lincoln invoked the biblical metaphor “a house divided against itself cannot stand’ to describe the deepening national conflict over slavery. He argued that the United States could not endure permanently half slave and half free, asserting that the nation must ultimately become all one thing or all the other—either slavery would be contained and placed on a course toward eventual extinction, or it would expand until it was lawful in all states, North and South alike.
Lincoln linked this division to recent political and legal developments, including the Kansas-Nebraska Act and the Supreme Court’s Dred Scott decision, which he saw as part of a coordinated effort to nationalize slavery.
The speech was controversial at the time and provided political ammunition to his opponents, but it also clarified Lincoln’s philosophical stance: he opposed the expansion of slavery on moral and political grounds and believed that resisting that expansion was essential for the survival of democratic self-government.
Although Lincoln lost the Senate race, the speech helped raise his national profile and foreshadowed the central issues of his later presidential campaign in 1860.
• Title: House Divided Speech
• Author: Abraham Lincoln
• Type: Speech
• Publisher: n/a
• Publication time: June 16, 1858
• Publication place: Springfield, Illinois, US
• Link: https://www.abrahamlincolnonline.org/lincoln/speeches/house.htm
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