USA HISTORY

Detailed explanation-1: -Lincoln’s “House Divided” speech. Click here for the text of this historical document. On June 16, 1858, at the Illinois Republican convention in Springfield, Abraham Lincoln kicked off his bid for the U.S. Senate with a speech that would come to be known as the “House Divided” speech.

Detailed explanation-2: -“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.

Detailed explanation-3: -By 1858, Lincoln was the most prominent leader in the new Republican Party in Illinois, and the clear choice to run against Douglas. He kicked off his campaign in earnest with a speech in Springfield that June, in which he famously declared that “A house divided against itself cannot stand..

Detailed explanation-4: -In his “house divided” speech, Lincoln countered that the Dred Scott decision the previous year had already opened the doors for slavery to be legal in the north, as well as all territories that the U.S. expanded into. If the U.S. wanted to be a free country, he argued, it had to act now before it was too late.

Detailed explanation-5: -As you can see, in this metaphor, the “house” refers to the Union-to the United States of America-and that house was divided between the opponents and advocates of slavery.