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American Republicanism · Speech
House Divided Speech
by Abraham Lincoln · The Union's Moral Witness · Civil War America, 1809-1865
Lincoln's early warning that the country could not permanently endure half slave and half free.
- Beginner
- ~15 min read
- 1 chapter guide
- Public domain
Start reading · Read the A House Divided guide free
Before the text
Editor's Prelude
The Warning Before The Debates
Abraham Lincoln’s warning begins inside a political contest, with the future of slavery at stake. On June 16, 1858, Illinois Republicans gathered in Springfield to choose their candidate for the United States Senate. The question was how to challenge Stephen A. Douglas, a formidable opponent whose recent dispute with President Buchanan made him seem, to some, a possible ally.
The divided house is a picture of a country living under incompatible systems. Lincoln’s fear concerns a legal transformation: decisions made in legislatures, elections and courts could make slavery secure where it had once been excluded. The language of popular choice might help conceal the loss of the power to choose.
His speech demands judgment about intentions that cannot be seen directly. Laws and court decisions become fitted timbers; political actors become the workmen who prepared them. The force of that image depends on the distinction between a pattern he can point to and a common plan he cannot absolutely know.
The opening pages
A House Divided
Illinois Republican State Convention
Springfield, Illinois · June 16, 1858
Mr. President and Gentlemen of the Convention.
If we could first know where we are, and whither we are tending, we could then better judge what to do, and how to do it.
We are now far into the fifth year, since a policy was initiated, with the avowed object, and confident promise, of putting an 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 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.
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 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 bosses, 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.
Chapter guides · 1
A House Divided
The Machinery And The Choice
Lincoln turns a famous warning into a case about coordinated legal drift, then asks Republicans who can be trusted to resist it.
The crisis is uniformity
Lincoln does not predict that the Union will immediately break apart. His claim is that it cannot remain permanently divided between slave and free systems. One side will arrest slavery's spread and place it on a path toward extinction, or the other will make it lawful throughout the country. That either-or claim gives the whole speech its pressure.
The machinery is the argument
The long middle links the Kansas-Nebraska Act, popular sovereignty, Buchanan's election, the Dred Scott decision, and the open question of whether a free state can exclude slavery. Lincoln admits he cannot prove a prearranged conspiracy. Instead he asks the audience to judge the fit: like timbers cut by different workers, the policies seem designed to complete one structure—a constitutional path toward national slavery.
The close demands party discipline
Lincoln's final target is the hope that Stephen Douglas can lead resistance because he has quarreled with President Buchanan over Kansas. Lincoln grants Douglas's ability but says his indifference to whether slavery is voted up or down makes him useless for this work. The ending therefore joins principle to organization: Republicans must trust their cause to people whose hands are free and who care about the result.
Questions readers ask
- How long does it take to read House Divided Speech?
- About 15 min in total.
- How difficult is House Divided Speech?
- Beginner. A short speech; about 15 minutes of reading.
- Which edition is this?
- The original English text, first published in 1858. The text follows ‘A House Divided’: Speech at Springfield, Illinois, in Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, vol. 2 (1953).
- Can I read House Divided Speech for free?
- House Divided Speech is part of Nexus Premium, so reading it needs an account and a Premium subscription. The opening above and one chapter guide on this page are free to read.
- How many chapter guides are there?
- One chapter guide, written by the Nexus editors; it opens in full here.
About Abraham Lincoln
Abraham Lincoln was the sixteenth president of the United States and led the country through the Civil War. His speeches and state papers transformed the meaning of the Union by joining constitutional duty, emancipation, sacrifice, and the unfinished promise of equality.
“Can a republic founded on liberty survive its own contradiction?”
Lincoln reinterpreted the American experiment under extreme pressure. His words turned the Civil War from a struggle over Union alone into a test of whether democratic government and human equality could survive.
Source text: public domain. Chapter guides: original Nexus writing. House Divided Speech is part of The Nexus Archive, guided Quests through the great works.