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- House divided redirects here. For the episode of the TV series House, see House Divided.
The "House Divided" speech is one of
Abraham Lincoln's best-known speeches.
The
House Divided Speech was an address given by
Abraham Lincoln (who would later become
President of the United States) on June 16, 1858, in
Springfield, Illinois, upon accepting the Illinois
Republican Party's nomination as that state's United States senator. The speech became the launching point for his unsuccessful campaign for the
Senate seat against
Stephen A. Douglas, which included the
Lincoln-Douglas debates of 1858. The speech created a lasting image of the danger of disunion because of
slavery, and it rallied Republicans across the
North. Along with the
Gettysburg Address and his
second inaugural address, this became one of the best-known speeches of his career.
The speech contains the quotation "A house divided against itself cannot stand," which is taken from
Matthew 12:25: "Every kingdom divided against itself is brought to desolation; and every city or house divided against itself shall not stand." Lincoln was referring to the division of the country between slave and free states. The "house divided" phrase had been used by others before. Eight years before Lincoln's speech, during the Senate debate on the
Compromise of 1850,
Sam Houston had proclaimed: "A nation divided against itself cannot stand." In fact, even during the war of 1812 a similar line had been spoken in a letter from Abigail Adams to Mercy Otis Warren. In remarking about the war she goes on to say:
| “ | "....A house divided upon itself- and upon that foundation do our enemies build their hopes of subduing us. | ” |
The most well-known passage of the speech is:
| “ | "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. | ” |
Lincoln's goal with this speech was to differentiate himself from
Stephen A. Douglas. Douglas maintained that
popular sovereignty, which allowed the residents of new territories to decide their own status as a slave or free state, would put an end to slavery-induced conflict and allow northern and southern states to coexist peacefully. Lincoln, however, said that the United States must be either all-slave or all-free. As long as the North and South held such distinct opinions, and as long as these issue permeated every political issue of the time, the Union could not function as a coalition of cooperative states.
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