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“House Divided” Speech
Abraham Lincoln, June 16, 1858
“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. . . . Either the
opponents of slavery will arrest the further spread of it. . . 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.
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. . . . While the Nebraska bill was
passing through Congress, a law case involving the question of a Negro’s freedom . . . was
passing through the United States Circuit Court. . . . The Negro’s name was Dred Scott. . . .
The several points of the Dred Scott decision . . . constitute the piece of machinery in its
present state of advancement. . . . The working points of that machinery are:
(1) That no Negro slave, imported as such from Africa, and no descendant of such
slave, can ever be a citizen of any State, in the sense of that term as used in the
Constitution of the United States. . . .
(2) That, “subject to the Constitution of the United States,” neither Congress nor a
territorial legislature can exclude slavery from any United States Territory. . . .
1. What does Lincoln mean by a “House Divided”?
2. What will eventually happen to a “House Divided,” according to Lincoln?
3. What was the outcome of the Dredd Scott decision concerning slavery?
4. What impact did the Dred Scott decision have on the slavery issue?
Lincoln Elected President
HISTORICAL BACKGROUND:
November 6, 1860 - Abraham Lincoln, who had declared "Government cannot endure permanently half slave, half
free..." is elected president.
Dec 20, 1860 - South Carolina secedes from the Union. Followed within two months by Mississippi, Florida,
Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana and Texas. Seven states of the Deep South, those in which the slavery system is most
entrenched, leave the Union. Many Southerners favored secession as part of the idea that the states have rights and
powers which the federal government cannot legally deny. The supporters of states' rights held that the national
government was a league of independent states, any of which had the right to secede.
Source: American Political Prints, 1766 - 1876: A Catalog of the Collections in the Library of Congress, 1991, by Bernard F. Reilly, Jr.
1. Using Lincoln's 1860 campaign poster, what did the Republican Party support?
2. What does the phrase "Free Territory" mean?
3. What part of the country would vote for Lincoln? Why?
4. Why would the election of Lincoln cause Southern states to leave the Union?