Current dating is based upon Don E. Fehrenbacher's hypothesis that this speech responds to Stephen A. Douglas' “‘You’ve got to be on one side or the other.’ In effect, he’s saying, ‘I’m on the side of freedom and Douglas … is on the side of slavery.’” Or, Lincoln at the Lincoln-Douglas debate in 1858, where he delivered his now-famous “house divided” line. “A house divided against itself cannot stand.” I believe this government cannot endure, permanently half slave and half free.
Abraham Lincoln was pretty annoyed with how the debate over slavery was going, so when he had a chance to get up and make a political speech, he did Lincoln introduces the "house divided" theme in the first section of his speech to illustrate just how bad the situation was in America. “All they heard was the ‘house divided’ part and they immediately assumed that what Lincoln was calling for was civil war, that the only way to resolve the slavery injustice was going to be civil conflict.” On the campaign trail, Douglas used the perception that Lincoln was advocating for war against him.“I think that there’s a fairly good argument to be made that the ‘house divided’ speech ended up hurting Lincoln in the 1858 election and was one reason why he lost,” Guelzo says.
He's basically saying: "You think I'm exaggerating? Yet Republicans weren’t too concerned about Lincoln’s race because they thought Senator Douglas, a Democrat, might be open to working with them against expanding slavery.“Douglas had been seeking a middle ground between North and South, some way of comprising on the slavery issue,” says In his “house divided” speech, Lincoln countered that the “Lincoln’s saying, ‘No, there is no compromise,’” Foner explains. He thought the country couldn’t remain half-free, and that it would end up becoming one or the other.
Looks at the reasons why this is a He also lays into his opponent for the senate seat, Stephen A. Douglas, whom he would soon face off with in the WWE of political debates, the Lincoln-Douglas debates.
The two main events are the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854 and the very recent Dred Scott decision of 1857. The “House Divided” Speech, ca. 1857–1858 By 1850, the extension of slavery into the new territories won through the Mexican-American War of 1846–1848 … Lincoln goes into all the reasons why Douglas' idea of popular sovereignty won't stop slavery, and might be a conspiracy to spread slavery nationwide. Mr. President and Gentlemen of the Convention: 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. Tall Nice Guy.
Many thought it had done too much, says “As soon as he used those words ‘house divided,’ he articulated the fear that everybody had at that point that the slavery controversy was indeed going to lead to some kind of civil war,” Guelzo says. Mr. Buchanan was elected, and the indorsement, 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.
He flat-out says that, soon, the U.S. will either allow or ban slavery everywhere…meaning those anti-slavery Republicans in the audience may have to put up with slavery in their neighborhood.To really drive home how real this threat is, Lincoln gives a detailed history of recent events in America that have illustrated the danger of an impending all-slavery America. The antebellum period included a series of events and legislation about slavery, especially the Kansas-Nebraska Act and the Dred Scott decision, which exacerbated existing tensions about the expansion of slavery into the west. Nicolay-Hay dates the speech to “October 1, 1858.” This date is incorrect, since Lincoln delivered a later form of this “House Divided” speech at the Republican State Convention on 16 June of that year (Basler 2: 261-2 and 464).