A House Divided

This is my second installment on The American Civil War.

A thousand Republican delegates met in the Springfield, Illinois, statehouse for the Republican State Convention on June 16, 1858. They chose Abraham Lincoln as their candidate for the U.S. Senate, running against Democrat Stephen A. Douglas. That night Abraham Lincoln delivered an address to his Republican delegates. The title reflects part of the speech’s introduction “A house divided against itself cannot stand.”  His source was the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke.  It was a speech that many of his closest colleagues did not want him to give.  They thought it to be too politically incorrect.  Against the wishes of his closest advisors Lincoln delivered the speech that would make him a national figure and a demon in the eyes of the southerners.

Following are the opening remarks of that speech;

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.

A lawyer and Lincoln supporter, Leonard Swett, said the speech defeated Lincoln in the Senate campaign. In 1866 he wrote to Herndon, Lincoln’s law partner, complaining, “Nothing could have been more unfortunate or inappropriate; it was saying first the wrong thing, yet he saw it was an abstract truth, but standing by the speech would ultimately find him in the right place.”  The world was not ready for Mr. Lincoln and it would take a very bloody war along with his assassination before he would receive the accolades he deserved.

Reflecting on the speech several years later, Robert Herndon said, “Through logic inductively seen, Lincoln as a statesman, and political philosopher, announced an eternal truth — not only as broad as America, but covers the world.” – from Abraham Lincoln Online

The United States were not yet united as we see today.  The North was becoming a commercial and industrial powerhouse that would soon be a world power.  Its steam driven factories were the finest in the world and along with the new wealth, a new social order was taking place as well.  Free blacks and single women were operating prosperous businesses even though they had to overcome prejudice and local laws that were difficult to bypass.

The South was agricultural and proudly so.  Its society was strictly governed by race and class, traditional and deeply conservative.  With slavery as its primary source of labor, it was in deep conflict with the North and a world wide abolitionist movement.  There was a third element to the problem and that was western expansion.

The Western Frontier and its new states upset the balance.  The South wanted new slave states and the North wanted to confine slavery to the existing levels.  In reference to slavery, Thomas Jefferson wrote, “We have the wolf by the ears, we can neither hold him, nor safely let him go.  Justice is in one scale, and self-preservation in the other.”  The United States was formed to protect the colonies from Imperialistic England and the Constitution was designed to protect us from common enemies.  The question of Missouri became the focal point of this monumental question.  Should Missouri enter as slave or free?  The Missouri Compromise, Uncle Tom’s Cabin, Voices for Abolition, the Kansas-Nebraska Act, “Bleeding Kansas”, The Dread Scott Decision and John Brown’s Raid were all factors.  Through these various compromises the Union would survive another 41 years before it broke with the election of Abraham Lincoln to the Presidency.

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