The pressures of trying to produce a company report have me tied down, but Amy Oliver of the Independence Institute has pointed out that today is the 148th anniversary of Lincoln's "House Divided" Speech to the Illinois Republican Convention.
Best-known is the opening:
If we could first know where we are, and whither we are tending, we could 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. Either the opponents of slavery will arrest the further spread of it, and place it where the public mind shall rest in the belief that it is in the course of ultimate extinction; or its advocates will push it forward, till it shall become alike lawful in all the States, old as well as new—North as well as South.
However, equally important is the closing. Here, Lincoln argues that while a political movement must be willing to accept help from all responsible comers, the leadership of a great cause must be entrusted to those who actually believe in it. Otherwise, it will eventually be betrayed by those who see a way to defend their true interests and values without actually delivering a victory:
Senator Douglas holds, we know, that a man may rightfully be wiser to—day than he was yesterday—that he may rightfully change when he finds himself wrong. But can we, for that reason, run ahead, and infer that he will make any particular change, of which he, himself, has given no intimation? Can we safely base our action upon any such vague inference? Now, as ever, I wish not to misrepresent Judge Douglas’s position, question his motives, or do aught that can be personally offensive to him. Whenever, if ever, he and we can come together on principle so that our cause may have assistance from his great ability, I hope to have interposed no adventitious obstacle. But clearly, he is not now with us—he does not pretend to be—he does not promise ever to be.Our cause, then, must be intrusted to, and conducted by, its own undoubted friends—those whose hands are free, whose hearts are in the work—who do care for the result. Two years ago the Republicans of the nation mustered over thirteen hundred thousand strong. We did this under the single impulse of resistance to a common danger, with every external circumstance against us. Of strange, discordant, and even hostile elements, we gathered from the four winds, and formed and fought the battle through, under the constant hot fire of a disciplined, proud and pampered enemy. Did we brave all then, to falter now?—now, when that same enemy is wavering, dissevered and belligerent? The result is not doubtful. We shall not fail—if we stand firm, we shall not fail. Wise counsels may accelerate, or mistakes delay it, but, sooner or later, the victory is sure to come.
While others of Lincoln's speeches are better-remembered, coming as they did during the crisis of the Civil War, Harry Jaffa considers this to be the most consequential of Lincoln's speeches.
As Don Fehrenbacher has written, everyone knew that a South that would not accept Stephen A. Douglas as leader of the Democratic Party, would never accept Abraham Lincoln as President of the United States. Yet the South was foolish in what it did. It actually looked at Douglas through the lenses Lincoln had kindly provided them in the debates, in the follow-up of the House Divided speech. Had they abated their demand for a slave code for Territories, they might have elected a President who might have found more certain means of guaranteeing the survival and success of slavery. Indeed, for all we know, slavery might be flourishing amongst us even now. That it does not, we have the House Divided speech to thank.
