600-750 word Essay--Follow the directions!!!!

Abraham Lincoln, “A House Divided” (1858)

Considered America’s greatest president, Lincoln was a little know politician and lawyer from

Illinois when he entered into his famous debates with Stephen Douglas. He was the first of the

new Republicans to be elected President which event precipitated the Southern secession

movement. A moderate on the slavery question, Lincoln argued against western expansion of

slavery but sought to leave it alone where it already existed. He insisted that the Civil War was a

war to preserve the union but his Emancipation Proclamation changed that for many into a moral

war against slavery. A master at political oratory, Lincoln is famous for many speeches and

phrases which defined the issues so dramatically. One is reproduced here in “A house Divided”

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. 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 the 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.

1. What is Lincoln’s view of America’s options as it deals with slavery? Compare/Contrast his

perspective with the secession of the South.

2. How do Lincoln’s attitudes and actions just before and just after his inauguration compare or

contrast with his resolve that America could not exist as “a house divided” and with his desire to

keep the Union together?