CHAPTER XIII

THE HOUSE DIVIDED

LINCOLN showed his independence and tenacity of purpose when he wrote his address accepting the nomination for United States Senator at the hands of the Republicans. This is known as "The House Divided Against Itself" speech. It embodied the historic declaration that the Union could not exist "half slave and half free." To his friend, Jesse K. Dubois, Lincoln said:

I refused to read the passage about the house divided against itself to you, because I knew you would ask me to change or modify it, and that I was determined not to do. I had willed it so, and was willing, if necessary, to perish with it. That expression is a truth of all human experience: a house divided against itself cannot stand. I want to use some universally known figure expressed in simple language, that it may strike home to the minds of men, in order to arouse them to the peril of the times. I would rather be defeated with this expression in the speech, and to uphold and discuss it before the people, than to be victorious without it.

It was this singular disposition to speak the whole truth that distinguished Lincoln from his fellows. He knew that a half truth is often worse than a whole lie. This he had attempted in his boyhood to make clear to his step-sister. Skilled politician as he was, his skill lay not in the artistic campaign lie, which may be effective for the moment, but later must inevitably involve its author in difficulty. His skill grew out of his knowledge that human nature, in the last analysis, adheres to the abstract principle of right, and that men and women the world over can always be aroused to the defence of moral truth when made to understand it. His political sagacity, therefore, consisted mainly in his faith, which was little short of sublime, in the final verdict of the common people, and "the common people heard him gladly." His friend and partner, Herndon, more far-seeing than Lincoln's critics, in speaking of the "house divided against itself" phrase, said: "Lincoln, deliver that speech as read, and it will make you President." In the light of subsequent events, Lincoln's utterance on that occasion must be regarded as a flash of inspiration, and his determination to perish with the truth, if need be, as an instance of rare courage, born from above. To the worldly wisdom of men, his path to the Presidency lay through

the United States Senate. It was a supreme moment, therefore, when this backwoods boy grown to manhood, was proposed for the great office of United States Senator. A sorer temptation can scarcely be conceived to barter his convictions to ambition. Lincoln knew that by pandering to the slave sentiment in the State he could probably be elected, and that to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, would bring defeat.

He recognized that the country must soon be all one thing, or all the other. The North could not remain faithful to anti-slavery, the South to proslavery, and the country remain one. He knew this just as he knew that the soul suffers no division in its adherence to spiritual truth. Lincoln could not have been an agnostic, either in religion or in politics, in his love of freedom or his loyalty to the Union. His was a positive nature. He must be either anti-slavery and unionist, or proslavery and dis-unionist. If he had not been a positive Christian, he would have been a rank infidel. Hypocrisy was something of which his worst enemies never seriously accused him, The principle that led him to occupy an uncomprising attitude in politics forced him to a like position in religion. It was not his nature to temporize. As

fast as he garnered the fruits of his mental and spiritual thought and effort, he brought them into use, adapting his political and social life to them. And the inherent truthfulness that marked his "house divided" address was only his natural and practical religion carried into his secular activities, as true religion should always manifest itself in practical life.

After the repeal of the Missouri Compromise, Lincoln became convinced that the nation could not endure half slave and half free. The Compromise itself, enacted in 1821, was probably the best measure under the conditions then existing. But it could not be finality. The very title of the measure indicated that conflicting views had entered into temporary truce. Inasmuch as these opposing views were based on radically different moral conceptions, it was inevitable that, in time, a conflict must ensue. Nothing is ever settled until it is settled right.

What the result would have been had the South held to the terms of the Compromise, no one can tell. It was the immorality of slavery as an institution, and its inconsistency with the progress of humanity which at last brought on the conflict that ended in the destruction of slavery. However, the slave party rode to its fall by aggressions which

impressed the anti-slavery forces, both North and South, with the inevitableness of the conflict. The South was not content to rest upon the laurels it won in the Compromise but continued to plan further extensions of slavery. Not only must it abide in States where human beings were already held as chattels, but the hated institution must be planted in territory then free.

The Southern politicians deliberately sought to nationalize the slavery system. Steadily and stealthily, powerfully but under cover, these proslavery leaders planned for the extension of slave territory. It was in the face of this growing and powerful conspiracy that Lincoln hurled his immortal challenge: "This nation cannot exist, half slave and half free."

Other crises in the history of nations have condensed tremendous principle and sentiment into a terse, striking sentence. The French Revolution gave us the words, "Liberty, Fraternity, Equality," "which rallied the adherents of a new order and gave them their battle cry. The Revolutionary crisis in this country gave immortality to Patrick Henry's declaration in the Virginia House of Burgesses: "Give me liberty or give me death!" Abraham Lincoln condensed and crystallized American sentiment on the central issue at the thresh