Abraham Lincoln: “House Divided” Speech

Explanation and Analysis of the Document

Lincoln's “House Divided” Speech is divided into three parts. The opening of the speech discusses the crisis of a nation torn apart by slavery. The second part details the involvement of northern Democrats in a scheme to nationalize slavery. The closing section opposes Douglas as leader of the antislavery forces.

Early in the speech Lincoln blames the Kansas-Nebraska Act and its author, Stephen Douglas, for opening the door to the extension of slavery. Rather than “putting an end to slavery agitation,” notes Lincoln, the act opened a Pandora's box of proslavery agitation. Lincoln's premise is that if Douglas's Kansas-Nebraska Act and popular sovereignty had not opened the door, the winds of slavery would not have become the raging storm that threatens the Union.

While predicting neither partition nor secession, Lincoln states that the Union will not be divided by slavery forever. Lincoln foresees two possibilities: 1) Either slavery's opponents will contain slavery where the Constitution places it until its eventual extinction, or 2) slavery will spread until it encompasses the entire country. The “house divided” metaphor in the fifth sentence (the quote is taken from the Gospels of Mark and Matthew in the Bible) along with the three sentences that follow contain the most controversial words of the speech:

“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.

Lincoln's supporters cautioned him against using this language, but he assumed that his audience of Illinois Republicans would be familiar with the biblical metaphor. His reference to the extinction of slavery was rooted in a shared understanding that the Founding Fathers considered slavery a temporary evil that would cease to exist at some indefinite point in the future. Southerners, however, heard a threat to extinguish slavery. Many came to view the speech as a precursor of William H. Seward's “Irrepressible Conflict” Speech given just five months later. Lincoln chose the house-divided metaphor to attack two ideas simultaneously: that there could be a common ground between slavery and freedom and that the Republican Party shared common ground with Douglas, the facilitator of slavery. Lincoln's objective in the speech is to prevent the Republican Party from making a tactical change that would make it the tail on the Douglas kite, thus abandoning its own moral foundation.

Lincoln begins the second part of the speech by charging that a conspiracy has been working to establish the legal mechanisms to nationalize slavery. In support of his claim, Lincoln refers to the historical record. He points to the “history of its construction,” from which “the evidences of design, and concert of action, among its chief bosses” could be traced. Lincoln cites three main points as benchmarks in erecting the mechanisms needed to nationalize slavery.

The first point “was … gained” when Douglas, with the support of President Franklin Pierce, introduced the Kansas-Nebraska Act. When Douglas was asked on the Senate floor whether he thought the people of a territory could legally exclude slavery, “the latter answers, ‘That is a question for the Supreme Court.'” Lincoln claims that the Dred Scott decision was deferred until James Buchanan's election was secured and the Republican Frémont defeated. The election of the proslavery Buchanan was “the second point gained.” A few days before Roger Taney's decision, Buchanan exhorted the public to accept the decision, in Lincoln's words, “whatever it might be.” When the decision was announced, Douglas made a speech in Springfield endorsing it. By this time in the speech, Lincoln has linked Douglas to slavery in the territories, to the proslavery Democrats Pierce and Buchanan, and to Chief Justice Taney.

Having linked Douglas with Buchanan, Lincoln then turns to the dispute over the Lecompton Constitution and Kansas. Lincoln reduces Douglas's struggle over the Lecompton Constitution to “a squabble” over a “mere question of fact” whether the people of Kansas had democratically voted for the Constitution. But on the question of slavery, “he cares not whether slavery be voted down or voted up.” Lincoln argues that after the Taney court ruled that slavery could not be legislated out of a territory, popular sovereignty became simply a doctrine of a people's “right … to make their own constitution.” It was upon this simple Democratic point that Douglas and the Republicans agreed and nothing more.

In subsequent lines Lincoln points to the Dred Scott decision as the final “point gained.” By depriving slaves and their descendants of the right to citizenship and by denying Congress the power to exclude slavery from the territories, Chief Justice Taney allowed slave owners to “fill up the territories with slaves” as protected property. By reducing slaves to the legal status of portable property, the decision increased the prospect that “the institution” could be made permanent anywhere in the United States. Lincoln sums up the decision by arguing that just as Dred Scott's master was free to keep him as a slave in the free state of Illinois, any slave owner may be free to bring “one, or one thousand slaves” into Illinois or “any other free State.”

Lincoln then argues that the effect of the trajectory from Kansas-Nebraska to Dred Scott was to “mould public opinion, at least Northern public opinion, to not care whether slavery is voted down or voted up.” The “not care” wording alluded to Douglas's attitude that he “doesn't care” whether or not the people of Kansas voted to legalize slavery.

Lincoln subsequently concedes that he cannot prove the existence of a conspiracy. He bases his claim on a building metaphor familiar to any Illinois farmer, in the process referring to four workmen who have the names Stephen, Franklin, Roger, and James. Just as the workmen Stephen, Franklin, Roger, and James planned their building together and built its scaffolding with only one piece missing, implies Lincoln, Senator Stephen Douglas, Presidents Franklin Pierce and James Buchanan, and Chief Justice Roger Taney worked together to build a structure needing only one more piece to nationalize slavery. That last piece of timber was the anticipated “Second Dred Scott,” which would allow masters to own and work slaves anywhere in the Union. Far from speculating, Lincoln was well aware that such a case (Lemmon v. The People) was making its way through the New York courts.

In the last part of the speech, Lincoln turns to the hopes of the eastern wing of the Republican Party for a coalition with Douglas. He disparages Douglas's suitability as an antislavery leader, referring to him as a “caged and toothless” “dead lion” who wouldn't oppose the advance of slavery, which “he don't care anything about.” He concludes with an appeal to the conscience of the Republican Party to oppose slavery on moral grounds, saying that if they “stand firm … sooner or later the victory is sure to come.”

Additional Commentary by Paul Finkelman, Albany Law School

In the nineteenth century, before the adoption of the Seventeenth Amendment (1913), state legislatures chose the U.S. senators, often with deals and compromises made by members of the majority party. Thus, candidates rarely directly ran for the Senate; the 1858 race in Illinois was different. In June the new Republican Party held a state convention and formally nominated Abraham Lincoln as its candidate. He later challenged the incumbent senator, Stephen A. Douglas, to a series of seven debates, to be forever known as the Lincoln-Douglas debates. Lincoln's campaign began at the state Republican convention, where he gave his famous “House Divided” Speech. His goal was to inspire his fellow Republicans to vigorously campaign for the party's candidates for the state legislature so that enough might win to send him to the U.S. Senate.

Although he was not particularly pious and not much of a churchgoer, Lincoln knew the Bible well, as did most educated men of his age. In the opening paragraph of this speech, he offers a biblical quotation: “A house divided against itself cannot stand.” Everyone in the audience would have recognized this line from Matthew 12:25, and many would have recalled the full verse: “And Jesus knew their thoughts, and said unto them, Every kingdom divided against itself is brought to desolation; and every city or house divided against itself shall not stand.” Lincoln's message was clear: The United States was facing a crisis over slavery. The house was the nation, and if the nation did not address the problem of slavery, “desolation” would follow.

Overall, the speech was an extended attack on Lincoln's opponent, Douglas, as well as on President Buchanan and Chief Justice Taney. It was also a warning that if the nation continued on its present path, the conspiracy of those men would be fulfilled, and slavery would become legal throughout the nation. Lincoln warns his fellow citizens, “We shall lie down pleasantly dreaming that the people of Missouri are on the verge of making their State free, and we shall awake to the reality instead, that the Supreme Court has made Illinois a slave State.” While the statement is seen as an exaggeration today, many Republicans truly feared that the supporters of slavery would never stop until it was protected everywhere in the nation. The election of Lincoln would help prevent this.

As a campaign document, the “House Divided” Speech was enormously successful in defining Lincoln and his issues as well as his opponent. Throughout the campaign, Douglas was forced to both defend and disassociate himself from the Dred Scott decision. Lincoln ended up losing the election among the state legislators in part because that body had not been reapportioned in many years. By 1858 a majority of the Illinois population lived in the northern part and were underrepresented; had there been a popular election, Lincoln probably would have won. In the 1860 presidential election, Lincoln would win more than half the popular vote in Illinois, while Douglas would carry only 47 percent. The “House Divided” Speech catapulted Lincoln into a leadership position in the new Republican Party by virtue of his strong rhetorical arguments and his ability not only to delineate why the Dred Scott decision was wrong but also to tie the result to the leading Democrats of the decade, the former president Franklin Pierce, President Buchanan, and Senator Douglas.