Lincoln‑Douglas

 These passages are adapted from the Lincoln‑Douglas

debates. Passage 1 is from a statement by Stephen Douglas.

Passage 2 is from a statement by Abraham Lincoln. Douglas

and Lincoln engaged in a series of debates while competing

for a US Senate seat in 1858.

Passage 1

Mr. Lincoln likens that bond of the Federal

Constitution, joining Free and Slave States together,

to a house divided against itself, and says that it is

contrary to the law of God, and cannot stand.

When did he learn, and by what authority does he

proclaim, that this Government is contrary to the law

of God and cannot stand? It has stood thus divided

into Free and Slave States from its organization up to

this day. During that period we have increased from

four millions to thirty millions of people; we have

extended our territory from the Mississippi to the

Pacific Ocean; we have acquired the Floridas and

Texas, and other territory sufficient to double our

geographical extent; we have increased in population,

in wealth, and in power beyond any example on

earth; we have risen from a weak and feeble power to

become the terror and admiration of the civilized

world; and all this has been done under a

Constitution which Mr. Lincoln, in substance, says is

in violation of the law of God; and under a Union

divided into Free and Slave States, which Mr. Lincoln

thinks, because of such division, cannot stand.

Surely, Mr. Lincoln is a wiser man than those who

framed the Government....

I now come back to the question, why cannot this

Union exist forever, divided into Free and Slave

States, as our fathers made it? It can thus exist if each

State will carry out the principles upon which our

institutions were founded; to wit, the right of each

State to do as it pleases, without meddling with its

neighbors. Just act upon that great principle, and this

Union will not only live forever, but it will extend

and expand until it covers the whole continent, and

makes this confederacy one grand, ocean-bound

Republic. We must bear in mind that we are yet a

young nation, growing with a rapidity unequalled in

the history of the world, that our national increase is

great, and that the emigration from the old world is

increasing, requiring us to expand and acquire new

territory from time to time, in order to give our

people land to live upon. If we live upon the principle

of State rights and State sovereignty, each State

regulating its own affairs and minding its own

business, we can go on and extend indefinitely, just

as fast and as far as we need the territory....

Passage 2

In complaining of what I said in my speech at

Springfield, in which he says I accepted my

nomination for the Senatorship . . . he again quotes

that portion in which I said that “a house divided

against itself cannot stand.” Let me say a word in

regard to that matter. He tries to persuade us that

there must be a variety in the different institutions of

the States of the Union; that that variety necessarily

proceeds from the variety of soil, climate, of the face

of the country, and the difference in the natural

features of the States. I agree to all that. Have these

very matters ever produced any difficulty among us?

Not at all. Have we ever had any quarrel over the fact

that they have laws in Louisiana designed to regulate

the commerce that springs from the production of

sugar? Or because we have a different class relative to

the production of flour in this State? Have they

produced any differences? Not at all. They are the

very cements of this Union. They don’t make the

house a “house divided against itself.” They are the

props that hold up the house and sustain the Union.

But has it been so with this element of slavery?

Have we not always had quarrels and difficulties over

it? And when will we cease to have quarrels over it?

Like causes produce like effects. It is worth while to

observe that we have generally had comparative

peace upon the slavery question, and that there has

been no cause for alarm until it was excited by the

effort to spread it into new territory. Whenever it has

been limited to its present bounds, and there has

been no effort to spread it, there has been peace. All

the trouble and convulsion has proceeded from

efforts to spread it over more territory. It was thus at

the date of the Missouri Compromise. It was so again

with the annexation of Texas; so with the territory

acquired by the Mexican War; and it is so now.

Whenever there has been an effort to spread it there

has been agitation and resistance. . . . Do you think

that the nature of man will be changed, that the same

causes that produced agitation at one time will not

have the same effect at another?

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