House Divided Speech

This guide relies upon Abraham Lincoln: Speeches and Writings 1832-1858, published by The Library of America in 1989.

Content Warning: The source material and this guide reference the enslavement of Black Americans and the associated racism and prejudice.

“A House Divided” was a speech delivered by Lincoln on June 16, 1858. The speech came shortly after Lincoln received the Republican nomination for US senator from Illinois at the party’s state convention in Springfield. Addressing the members present, Lincoln begins by alluding to the Kansas-Nebraska Act (1854), which he argues has failed to meet its objective of bringing the “slavery agitation” to rest. Not only this, but the law has made the agitation even greater, and Lincoln predicts that it will not subside until it has been resolved through a crisis. Invoking scripture, he contends that the United States cannot exist as a union that is half free and “half slave,” reiterating that, “A house divided against itself cannot stand” (Mark 3:25; Matthew 12:25, KJV) (426). Lincoln emphasizes that he does not believe the government of the United States will fail but that the union and the laws that govern it will become entirely in line with, or else set against, slavery. He rhetorically asks whether it is not possible to conceive that all states and territories will ultimately be opened up to slavery.

Lincoln suggests that certain “bosses,” whom he identifies later in the speech as his Democratic opponent for the Illinois Senate seat, Stephen A. Douglas, former President Franklin Pierce, current President James A. Buchanan, and Chief Justice of the United States Roger Taney, have conspired to open all federal territories to slavery. Lincoln states that this conspiracy was first set in motion by the claim that the Kansas-Nebraska bill protected the “sacred right of self-government,” which Lincoln pejoratively refers to as “squatter sovereignty” (427). Then, in the Congressional proceedings leading to the adoption of the bill, Lincoln recounts that Senator Trumbull asked Senator Douglas whether he believed that the people of a federal territory had the power to exclude slavery. Douglas deflected the question, stating only, “That is a question for the Supreme Court,” and an amendment specifically allowing a territory to exclude slavery was defeated (428).

As the Kansas-Nebraska bill was being passed through Congress, a lawsuit, filed by an enslaved man named Dred Scott, was making its way through the federal courts. Lincoln notes that a decision in the case was suspiciously postponed until after the presidential election of 1856. When the case was finally decided, both Buchanan and Douglas quickly endorsed the result, even though Buchanan had not yet assumed office. Buchanan, Douglas, and other Democrats had hoped the election of 1856 could be passed off as a popular endorsement of the Kansas-Nebraska doctrine. However, the result of the election, in which Buchanan failed to secure a popular majority, places this hope in doubt.

Lincoln then turns to discuss a disagreement that subsequently occurred between Buchanan and Douglas over the validity of the Lecompton Constitution. In the course of this “squabble,” as Lincoln calls it, Douglas states that he “cares not whether slavery be voted up or down,” but only that the people be allowed a fair vote on the matter (428). Lincoln believes this to be intended not as a sincere statement of conscience, but merely a state of mind, which Douglas would impress on the general public.

As embodied by the Kansas-Nebraska Act and the Dred Scott decision, the “machinery” of this conspiracy is composed of three objectives: (1) prohibiting citizenship to any enslaved person; (2) denying both Congress and territorial legislatures the right to exclude slavery; and (3) preventing the federal courts from deciding whether holding an enslaved person in a free state legally frees that person. Lincoln argues that while the first two of these objectives have been accomplished, the third is intended to be attained through a gradual public acquiescence. The strategic goal of the Kansas-Nebraska Act is to shape public opinion, especially in northern states, not to care whether slavery is approved or disapproved.

While Douglas and others may have successfully hidden their intentions from the public and even from political elites as the plot unfolded, it can now be clearly observed in its near-complete success. The language of the Kansas-Nebraska Act stating that the people were to be “perfectly free” to decide the question of slavery “subject only to the Constitution” (emphasis added) is now revealed to be the very mechanism used to deny the people of each territory the right to decide that question (430). Furthermore, the Supreme Court’s decision to decide Dred Scott v. Sanford after the election is now realized to be nothing more than a tactic to avoid the consequences of public opinion. The proposed amendment to the Kansas-Nebraska Act, which would have expressly stated the right of a federal territory to exclude slavery, was rejected because Douglas and his co-conspirators had always planned that this right would be denied by the Dred Scott decision. Lincoln compares all the caution and calculation by Douglas, Pierce, and Buchanan to “patting and petting a spirited horse” about to be mounted (430). He uses an allegorical story about workmen building a house to prove his point about the conspiracy (431).

Lincoln next makes a startling observation about the language of the Kansas-Nebraska Act, which states that “the people of a State as well as Territory, were to be left ‘perfectly free’ ‘subject only to the Constitution” (emphasis in original) (431). Lincoln notices that the language of the Act strangely mentions a state, even though the Act is intended only to effect territories. Meanwhile, in the Dred Scott case, neither the majority opinion by Chief Justice Taney, nor any of the concurring opinions of the associate justices, mention whether the Constitution prevents a state, rather than a territory, from excluding slavery. Just as the Kansas-Nebraska Act declined to include language guaranteeing a territorial legislature the right to exclude slavery, the Dred Scott decision declines to comment on whether a state has that same power. Lincoln warns that unless those in power are defeated, it may well be that states, including Illinois, will effectively become slave states by judicial decree.

The impending work of the Republican Party is to defeat the incumbent administration and its political allies. Lincoln wonders how best to do this. He is concerned that there has been a great deal of sympathy for Senator Douglas amongst Republicans. He compares Douglas to a dead lion and argues that “a living dog,” metaphorically representing Lincoln, “is better than a dead lion” (433). If Douglas is not a “dead lion,” then at least, Lincoln argues, he is one who has been rendered “caged and toothless” by his own political necessities (all emphases in original) (433). Lincoln fears that Douglas’s stance on slavery, caring not whether it endures, may even open the door to a renewal of the African slave trade. Lincoln urges that while Douglas has vaguely implied that he may change his mind about slavery or any other issue, this is an entirely insufficient grounds for the people of Illinois to put their trust in him. Lincoln believes that while Douglas should be respected for his political talents, he has done nothing of late to suggest that he is an individual fit to serve the best interests or moral convictions of the people of Illinois. Therefore, he cannot be relied upon.

In concluding, Lincoln boasts that The Election of 1856 saw an impressive turnout of 1,300,000 Republican votes nation-wide. These votes came from “strange, discordant, and even, hostile elements” (emphasis in original) of the population (434). Lincoln urges the convention that if Republicans act now, as they have in the past, with unity and tactfulness, they will be victorious in the forthcoming election and beyond.