A House Divided

“But he, knowing their thoughts, said unto them, every kingdom divided against itself is brought to desolation; and a house divided against a house falleth”.

Luke 11:17

On June 16, 1858 in his address to the Illinois State Republican Convention, Abraham Lincoln paraphrased this verse into “a house divided against itself cannot stand”. Lincoln had just received the Party nomination as its candidate for the Illinois Senate seat to challenge the Democrat Stephen Douglas. He was warning of a coming crisis that could split the Union. The division Lincoln referred to was the northern states against the southern states over slavery and the question of its expansion into the western territories. He felt that the federal government was ultimately going to have to decide the issue while his incumbent opponent Douglas supported states rights and popular sovereignty.

Lincoln’s speech did not sit well with some of the 1000 delegates at the convention thinking his position of federal intervention too radical. Lincoln would lose to Douglas in a close election but this speech drew national attention and would serve to catapult him into the Presidential election of 1860, which he would win.