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Civil War |
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"House
Divided" Speech (June
16, 1858) Abraham
Lincoln Lincoln
gave his "House Divided" speech on June
16, 1858 after winning the Republican
nomination for the Senate in Springfield,
Illinois. His phrase, "A house divided
against itself cannot stand" describes the
national problem of the growing conflict
between the Free states and the Slave
States. The Civil War was nearly three
years away. "Mr.
PRESIDENT and Gentlemen of the
Convention. If
we could first know where we are, and
whither we are tending, we could then
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 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 . Have
we no tendency to the latter condition?
Let
any one who doubts, carefully contemplate
that now almost complete legal
combination---piece of machinery so to
speak---compounded of the Nebraska
doctrine, and the Dred Scott decision. Let
him consider not only what work the
machinery is adapted to do, and how well
adapted; but also, let him study the
history of its construction, and trace, if
he can, or rather fail , if he can, to
trace the evidences of design, and concert
of action, among its chief bosses, from
the beginning. But,
so far, Congress only, had acted; and an
endorsement by the people, real or
apparent, was indispensable, to save the
point already gained, and give chance for
more. The
new year of 1854 found slavery excluded
from more than half the States by State
Constitutions, and from most of the
national territory by Congressional
prohibition. Four
days later, commenced the struggle, which
ended in repealing that Congressional
prohibition. This
opened all the national territory to
slavery; and was the first point gained.
This
necessity had not been overlooked; but had
been provided for, as well as might be, in
the notable argument of `` squatter
sovereignty ,'' otherwise called `` sacred
right of self government ,'' which latter
phrase, though expressive of the only
rightful basis of any government, was so
perverted in this attempted use of it as
to amount to just this: That if any one
man, choose to enslave another , no third
man shall be allowed to object.
That
argument was incorporated into the
Nebraska bill itself, in the language
which follows: `` It being the true intent
and meaning of this act not to legislate
slavery into any Territory or state, nor
to exclude it therefrom; but to leave the
people thereof perfectly free to form and
regulate their domestic institutions in
their own way, subject only to the
Constitution of the United States .''
Then
opened the roar of loose declamation in
favor of ``Squatter Sovereignty,'' and
``Sacred right of self government.''
``But,''
said opposition members, ``let us be more
specific ---let us amend the bill so as to
expressly declare that the people of the
territory may exclude slavery.'' ``Not
we,'' said the friends of the measure; and
down they voted the amendment. While
the Nebraska bill was passing through
congress, a law case , involving the
question of a Negro's freedom, by reason
of his owner having voluntarily taken him
first into a free state and then a
territory covered by the congressional
prohibition, and held him as a slave, for
a long time in each, was passing through
the U.S. Circuit Court for the District of
Missouri; and both Nebraska bill and law
suit were brought to a decision in the
same month of May, 1854. The Negro's name
was ``Dred Scott,'' which name now
designates the decision finally made in
the case. Before
the then next Presidential election, the
law case came to , and was argued in the
Supreme Court of the United States; but
the decision of it was deferred until
after the election. Still, before the
election, Senator Trumbull, on the floor
of the Senate, requests the leading
advocate of the Nebraska bill to state his
opinion whether the people of a territory
can constitutionally exclude slavery from
their limits; and the latter answers,
``That is a question for the Supreme
Court.'' The
election came. Mr. Buchanan was elected,
and the endorsement , such as it was,
secured. That was the second point gained.
The endorsement, however, fell short of a
clear popular majority by nearly four
hundred thousand votes, and so, perhaps,
was not overwhelmingly reliable and
satisfactory. The
outgoing President, in his last annual
message, as impressively as possible
echoed back upon the people the weight and
authority of the endorsement. The
Supreme Court met again; did not announce
their decision, but ordered a re-argument.
The
Presidential inauguration came, and still
no decision of the court; but the incoming
President, in his inaugural address,
fervently exhorted the people to abide by
the forthcoming decision, whatever it
might be . Then,
in a few days, came the decision.
The
reputed author of the Nebraska bill finds
an early occasion to make a speech at this
capitol endorsing the Dred Scott Decision,
and vehemently denouncing all opposition
to it. The
new President, too, seizes the early
occasion of the Silliman letter to endorse
and strongly construe that decision, and
to express his astonishment that any
different view had ever been entertained.
At
length a squabble springs up between the
President and the author of the Nebraska
bill, on the mere question of fact ,
whether the Lecompton constitution was or
was not, in any just sense, made by the
people of Kansas; and in that squabble the
latter declares that all he wants is a
fair vote for the people, and that he
cares not whether slavery be voted down or
voted up . I do not understand his
declaration that he cares not whether
slavery be voted down or voted up, to be
intended by him other than as an apt
definition of the policy he would impress
upon the public mind---the principle for
which he declares he has suffered much,
and is ready to suffer to the end.
And
well may he cling to that principle. If he
has any parental feeling, well may he
cling to it. That principle, is the only
shred left of his original Nebraska
doctrine. Under the Dred Scott decision,
``squatter sovereignty'' squatted out of
existence, tumbled down like temporary
scaffolding---like the mould at the
foundry served through one blast and fell
back into loose sand---helped to carry an
election, and then was kicked to the
winds. His late joint struggle with the
Republicans, against the Lecompton
Constitution, involves nothing of the
original Nebraska doctrine. That struggle
was made on a point, the right of a people
to make their own constitution, upon which
he and the Republicans have never
differed. The
several points of the Dred Scott decision,
in connection with Senator Douglas' ``care
not'' policy, constitute the piece of
machinery, in its present state of
advancement. This was the third point
gained. The
working points of that machinery are:
First,
that no negro slave, imported as such from
Africa, and no descendant of such slave
can ever be a citizen of any State, in the
sense of that term as used in the
Constitution of the United States.
This
point is made in order to deprive the
negro, in every possible event, of the
benefit of this provision of the United
States Constitution, which declares
that--- ``The
citizens of each State shall be entitled
to all privileges and immunities of
citizens in the several States.''
Secondly,
that ``subject to the Constitution of the
United States,'' neither Congress nor a
Territorial Legislature can exclude
slavery from any United States territory.
This
point is made in order that individual men
may fill up the territories with slaves,
without danger of losing them as property,
and thus to enhance the chances of
permanency to the institution through all
the future. Thirdly,
that whether the holding a negro in actual
slavery in a free State, makes him free,
as against the holder, the United States
courts will not decide, but will leave to
be decided by the courts of any slave
State the negro may be forced into by the
master. This
point is made, not to be pressed
immediately ; but, if acquiesced in for a
while, and apparently endorsed by the
people at an election, then to sustain the
logical conclusion that what Dred Scott's
master might lawfully do with Dred Scott,
in the free State of Illinois, every other
master may lawfully do with any other one
, or one thousand slaves, in Illinois, or
in any other free State. Auxiliary
to all this, and working hand in hand with
it, the Nebraska doctrine, or what is left
of it, is to educate and mould public
opinion, at least Northern public opinion,
to not care whether slavery is voted down
or voted up . This
shows exactly where we now are ; and
partially also, whither we are tending.
It
will throw additional light on the latter,
to go back, and run the mind over the
string of historical facts already stated.
Several things will now appear less dark
and mysterious than they did when they
were transpiring. The people were to be
left ``perfectly free'' ``subject only to
the Constitution.'' What the Constitution
had to do with it, outsiders could not
then see. Plainly enough now , it was an
exactly fitted niche , for the Dred Scott
decision to afterwards come in, and
declare the perfect freedom of the people,
to be just no freedom at all. Why
was the amendment, expressly declaring the
right of the people to exclude slavery,
voted down? Plainly enough now , the
adoption of it, would have spoiled the
niche for the Dred Scott decision.
Why
was the court decision held up? Why, even
a Senator's individual opinion withheld,
till after the Presidential election?
Plainly enough now , the speaking out then
would have damaged the `` perfectly free
'' argument upon which the election was to
be carried. Why
the outgoing President's felicitation on
the endorsement? Why the delay of a
re-argument? Why the incoming President's
advance exhortation in favor of the
decision? These
things look like the cautious patting and
petting a spirited horse, preparatory to
mounting him, when it is dreaded that he
may give the rider a fall. And
why the hasty after endorsements of the
decision by the President and others?
We
can not absolutely know that all these
exact adaptations are the result of
pre-concert. But when we see a lot of
framed timbers, different portions of
which we know have been gotten out at
different times and places and by
different workmen---Stephen, Franklin,
Roger and James, for instance---and when
we see these timbers joined together, and
see they exactly make the frame of a house
or a mill, all the tenons and mortices
exactly fitting, and all the lengths and
proportions of the different pieces
exactly adapted to their respective
places, and not a piece too many or too
few---not omitting even scaffolding---or,
if a single piece be lacking, we can see
the place in the frame exactly fitted and
prepared to yet bring such piece in---in
such a case, we find it impossible to not
believe that Stephen and Franklin and
Roger and James all understood one another
from the beginning, and all worked upon a
common plan or draft drawn up before the
first lick was struck. It
should not be overlooked that, by the
Nebraska bill, the people of a State as
well as Territory , were to be left ``
perfectly free '' `` subject only to the
Constitution .'' Why
mention a State ? They were legislating
for territories , and not for or about
States. Certainly the people of a State
are and ought to be subject to the
Constitution of the United States; but why
is mention of this lugged into this merely
territorial law? Why are the people of a
territory and the people of a state
therein lumped together, and their
relation to the Constitution therein
treated as being precisely the same?
While
the opinion of the Court , by Chief
Justice Taney, in the Dred Scott case, and
the separate opinions of all the
concurring Judges, expressly declare that
the Constitution of the United States
neither permits Congress nor a Territorial
legislature to exclude slavery from any
United States territory, they all omit to
declare whether or not the same
Constitution permits a state , or the
people of a State, to exclude it.
Possibly
, this was a mere omission ; but who can
be quite sure, if McLean or Curtis had
sought to get into the opinion a
declaration of unlimited power in the
people of a state to exclude slavery from
their limits, just as Chase and Macy
sought to get such declaration, in behalf
of the people of a territory, into the
Nebraska bill---I ask, who can be quite
sure that it would not have been voted
down, in the one case, as it had been in
the other. The
nearest approach to the point of declaring
the power of a State over slavery, is made
by Judge Nelson. He approaches it more
than once, using the precise idea, and
almost the language too, of the Nebraska
act. On one occasion his exact language
is, ``except in cases where the power is
restrained by the Constitution of the
United States, the law of the State is
supreme over the subject of slavery within
its jurisdiction.'' In
what cases the power of the states is so
restrained by the U.S. Constitution, is
left an open question, precisely as the
same question, as to the restraint on the
power of the territories was left open in
the Nebraska act. Put that and that
together, and we have another nice little
niche, which we may, ere long, see filled
with another Supreme Court decision,
declaring that the Constitution of the
United States does not permit a state to
exclude slavery from its limits.
And
this may especially be expected if the
doctrine of ``care not whether slavery be
voted down or voted up ,'' shall gain upon
the public mind sufficiently to give
promise that such a decision can be
maintained when made. Such
a decision is all that slavery now lacks
of being alike lawful in all the States.
Welcome
or unwelcome, such decision is probably
coming, and will soon be upon us, unless
the power of the present political dynasty
shall be met and overthrown. 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. To
meet and overthrow the power of that
dynasty, is the work now before all those
who would prevent that consummation.
That
is what we have to do. But
how can we best do it? There
are those who denounce us openly to their
own friends, and yet whisper us softly ,
that Senator Douglas is the aptest
instrument there is, with which to effect
that object. They do not tell us, nor has
he told us, that he wishes any such object
to be effected. They wish us to infer all,
from the facts, that he now has a little
quarrel with the present head of the
dynasty; and that he has regularly voted
with us, on a single point, upon which, he
and we, have never differed. They
remind us that he is a very great man ,
and that the largest of us are very small
ones. Let this be granted. But ``a living
dog is better than a dead lion .'' Judge
Douglas, if not a dead lion for this work
, is at least a caged and toothless one.
How can he oppose the advances of slavery?
He don't care anything about it. His
avowed mission is impressing the ``public
heart'' to care nothing about it.
A
leading Douglas Democratic newspaper
thinks Douglas' superior talent will be
needed to resist the revival of the
African slave trade. Does
Douglas believe an effort to revive that
trade is approaching? He has not said so.
Does he really think so? But if it is, how
can he resist it? For years he has labored
to prove it a sacred right of white men to
take negro slaves into the new
territories. Can he possibly show that it
is less a sacred right to buy them where
they can be bought cheapest? And,
unquestionably they can be bought cheaper
in Africa than in Virginia . He
has done all in his power to reduce the
whole question of slavery to one of a mere
right of property ; and as such, how can
he oppose the foreign slave trade---how
can he refuse that trade in that
``property'' shall be ``perfectly
free''---unless he does it as a protection
to the home production? And as the home
producers will probably not ask the
protection, he will be wholly without a
ground of opposition. Senator
Douglas holds, we know, that a man may
rightfully be wiser today 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 to not misrepresent Judge
Douglas' position , question his motives ,
or do ought that can be personally
offensive to him. Whenever,
if ever , he and we can come together on
principle so that our great 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 to
ever be. Our
cause, then, must be entrusted 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
councils may accelerate or mistakes delay
it, but, sooner or later the victory is
sure to come. " "The
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