Abraham Lincoln: “House Divided” Speech

Impact

Following Lincoln's “House Divided” Speech, the table was set for the most famous battle in the history of American Senate campaigns. Douglas agreed to a series of seven debates, which became known as the “Lincoln-Douglas Debates.” The debate trail covered over four thousand miles and drew tens of thousands of spectators. Each debate, printed in major newspapers outside the South, riveted public attention across the nation. The contrast between Lincoln, who was six feet, four inches tall and had the persistent logical manner of a prosecuting attorney, and the foot-shorter “little giant” with the booming voice, truculent mien, and well-honed theatrical oratory, could not have been starker.

Although Lincoln received more votes than Douglas, the Illinois apportionment system, biased toward the conservative southern half of the state, worked to return Douglas to the Senate. Lincoln accomplished his goal of breaking the Republican Party from its illusions in Douglas, however. Douglas's race-baiting rhetoric, his painting the moderate Lincoln as a “black Republican,” and his defense of southern expansionism led eastern Republicans to back Lincoln. Greeley's New York Herald Tribune denounced Douglas's “squatter sovereignty” principle, his opposition to civil rights of any kind for free blacks, and his willingness to let slavery grow.

By spring 1860 the debates had been published in book form. Selling for fifty cents a copy, the first run of thirty thousand copies quickly sold out, and subsequent printings also sold quickly. While it is too much to attribute Lincoln's nomination for the presidency to the debates, the speech and the subsequent debates advertised Lincoln throughout the North and made his name a household word.