Abraham Lincoln: “House Divided” Speech

Context

Between 1848 and 1854 the United States added the West Coast and the Southwest to its national domain and began the settlement of the Great Plains of Kansas and Nebraska. Even before the cessation of hostilities with Mexico, the question of whether this massive area would be open to slavery was posed. The Wilmot Proviso, which prohibited slavery in the lands of the Mexican Cession, passed the House of Representatives in 1846 but failed in the southern-dominated Senate.

By 1848 three positions on the future of these lands had emerged: 1) slavery should be allowed, 2) slavery should be prohibited, and 3) slavery should be decided by popular sovereignty. Popular sovereignty left the question of slavery to the residents of the territories themselves. By 1849 sectional tensions over slavery in the territories threatened to spark secession. Hoping to restore the national consensus on the slavery question, Henry Clay of Kentucky and Stephen Douglas of Illinois cobbled together a package of bills that tried to conciliate all three positions. These bills, collectively known as the Compromise of 1850, admitted California as a free state, outlawed the slave trade in the nation's capital, enacted a stiffer fugitive slave law, and left the future of slavery in the New Mexico and Utah territories to popular sovereignty. The compromise pleased no one, however. The new fugitive slave law enraged antislavery northerners, the admission of California as a free state angered southerners, and leaving the territories to popular sovereignty stoked anxieties on both sides.

In 1854 Douglas introduced the Kansas-Nebraska Act, which organized the Kansas-Nebraska territories based on popular sovereignty and began an explosive argument over what the settlers were constitutionally empowered to do. Letting settlers decide whether to allow slavery in these territories invalidated the Missouri Compromise of 1820. The prospect of slavery invading the free-labor North ignited a firestorm among Free-Soilers. This fear fed the growing belief in the existence of a “slave power” conspiracy to expand slavery. When the renewed sectional division split the Whig Party, Free-Soil forces united to form the Republican Party in 1854 based on opposition to the expansion of slavery.

Lincoln personally believed that slavery was morally evil, violated the ideals of the Declaration of Independence, and threatened free labor everywhere. While he was convinced that if it were allowed to expand, slavery would imperil the existence of the United States as a popular government, he also believed that the Constitution protected slavery where it existed. Fearing a trend toward the spread of slavery, Lincoln joined the Republicans and became a party leader in Illinois.

By 1856 a bitter war raged in Kansas. “Bleeding Kansas,” as the divided state was called, dominated the news when the Republicans nominated John C. Frémont for president in 1856. Frémont lost a close race to James Buchanan.

In 1857 Supreme Court Justice Roger Taney issued the Dred Scott v. Sandford decision. Taney ruled that as chattel property, slaves remained slaves whether they resided in slave states or free states. Taney also nullified the Missouri Compromise of 1820 by ruling that Congress lacked the authority to ban slavery anywhere in the national domain.

In the winter of 1858 a proslavery minority in Kansas met in Lecompton and drafted a constitution, which it then submitted to Congress. President Buchanan embraced the Lecompton Constitution and urged Congress to admit Kansas as the sixteenth slave state.

Douglas opposed the Lecompton Constitution as the product of an undemocratic process. Elated at Douglas's opposition to the proslavery constitution, eastern Republicans such as New York Tribune editor Horace Greeley and William H. Seward urged Illinois Republicans to support Douglas in the upcoming Senate race. A stunned Lincoln responded with letters of protest while preparing to battle the “Douglas revolt” in his party in the upcoming Senate race. On June 16, 1858, the Illinois Republican Party staged a revolt of its own by unanimously nominating Abraham Lincoln for the U.S Senate.