| Lincoln's House Divided Speech | |
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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. 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.
Have we no tendency to the latter condition?
Let anyone who doubts carefully contemplate that now almost complete legal
combination -- piece of machinery, so to speak -- compounded of the Nebraska
doctrine and the Dred Scott decision. Let him consider, not only what work
the machinery is adapted to do, and how well adapted, but also let him study
the history of its construction and trace, if he can, or rather fail, if he
can, to trace the evidences of design and concert of action among its chief
architects, from the beginning.
The new year of 1854 found slavery excluded from more than half the states
by state constitutions and from most of the national territory by
congressional prohibition. Four days later commenced the struggle which
ended in repealing that congressional prohibition. This opened all the
national territory to slavery and was the first point gained.
But, so far, Congress only had acted; and an endorsement by the
people, real or apparent, was indispensable to save the point already gained
and give chance for more.
This necessity had not been overlooked, but had been provided for, as well
as might be, in the notable argument of "squatter sovereignty,"
other-wise called "sacred right of self-government," which latter
phrase, though expressive of the only rightful basis of any government, was
so perverted in this attempted use of it as to amount to just this: That if
any one man choose to enslave another, no third man
shall be allowed to object. That argument was incorporated into the Nebraska
Bill itself, in the language which follows:
It being the true intent and meaning of this act not to legislate slavery into an territory or state, nor to exclude it therefrom, but to leave the people there-of perfectly free to form and regulate their domestic institutions in their own way, subject only to the Constitution of the United States.
Then opened the roar of loose declamation in favor of "squatter
sovereignty" and "sacred right of self-government."
"But," said opposition members, "let us amend the bill so as
to expressly declare that the people of the territory may exclude
slavery." "Not we," said the friends of the measure; and down
they voted the amendment.
While the Nebraska Bill was passing through Congress, a law case, involving
the question of a Negro's freedom, by reason of his owner having voluntarily
taken him first into a free state and then into a territory covered by the
congressional prohibition, and held him as a slave for a long time in each,
was passing through the United States Circuit Court for the district of
Missouri; and both Nebraska Bill and lawsuit were brought to a decision in
the same month of May 1854. The Negro's name was Dred Scott, which name now
designates the decision finally made in the case. Before the then next
presidential election, the law case came to, and was argued in, the Supreme
Court of the United States; but the decision of it was deferred until after
the election. Still, before the election, Senator Trumbull, on the floor of
the Senate, requested the leading advocate of the Nebraska Bill to state his
opinion whether the people of a territory can constitutionally exclude
slavery from their limits; and the latter answers: "That is a question
for the Supreme Court."
The election came. Mr. Buchanan was elected, and the endorsement, such as it
was, secured. That was the second point gained. The endorsement, however,
fell short of a clear popular majority by nearly 400,000 votes, and so,
perhaps, was not overwhelmingly reliable and satisfactory. The outgoing
President, in his last annual message, as impressively as possible echoed
back upon the people the weight and authority of the endorsement. The
Supreme Court met again, did not announce their decision, but ordered a
reargument.
The presidential inauguration came, and still no decision of the Court; but
the incoming President, in his inaugural address, fervently exhorted the
people to abide by the forthcoming decision, whatever it might be. Then, in
a few days, came the decision.
The reputed author of the Nebraska Bill finds an early occasion to make a
speech at this capital endorsing the Dred Scott decision, and vehemently
denouncing all opposition to it. The new President, too, seizes the early
occasion of the Silliman letter to endorse and strongly construe that
decision, and to express his astonishment that any different view had ever
been entertained!
At length a squabble springs up between the President and the author of the
Nebraska Bill, on the mere question of fact, whether the Lecompton
constitution was or was not in any just sense made by the people of Kansas;
and in that quarrel the latter declares that all he wants is a fair vote for
the people, and that he cares not whether slavery be voted down or
voted up. I do not understand his declaration, that he cares not
whether slavery be voted down or voted up, to be intended by him other than
as an apt definition of the policy he would impress upon the public mind --
the principle for which he declares he has suffered so much and is ready to
suffer to the end. And well may he cling to that principle! If he has any
parental feeling, well may he cling to it. That principle is the only shred
left of his original Nebraska doctrine.
Under the Dred Scott decision, "squatter sovereignty" squatted out
of existence, tumbled down like temporary scaffolding; like the mold at the
foundry, served through one blast and fell back into loose sand; helped to
carry an election and then was kicked to the winds. His late joint struggle
with the Republicans against the Lecompton constitution involves nothing of
the original Nebraska doctrine. That struggle was made on a point -- the
right of a people to make their own constitution -- upon which he and the
Republicans have never differed.
The several points of the Dred Scott decision, in connection with Senator
Douglas' "care not" policy, constitute the piece of machinery in
its present state of advancement. This was the third point gained. The
working points of that machinery are:
First, that no Negro slave, imported as such from Africa, and no descendant
of such slave can ever be a citizen of any state in the sense of that term
as used in the Constitution of the United States. This point is made in
order to deprive the Negro, in every possible event, of the benefit of that
provision of the United States Constitution which declares that "the
citizens of each state shall be entitled to all the privileges and
immunities of citizens in the several states."
Second, that, "subject to the Constitution of the United States,"
neither Congress nor a territorial legislature can exclude slavery from any
United States territory. This point is made in order that individual men may
fill up the territories with slaves, without danger of losing them as
property, and thus enhance the chances of permanency to the institution
through all the future.
Third, that whether the holding a Negro in actual slavery in a free state
makes him free, as against the holder, the United States courts will not
decide, but will leave to be decided by the courts of any slave state the
Negro may be forced into by the master. This point is made, not to be
pressed immediately but, if acquiesced in for awhile, and apparently
endorsed by the people at an election, then to sustain the logical
conclusion that what Dred Scott's master might lawfully do with Dred Scott
in the free state of Illinois, every other master may lawfully do with any
other one, or 1,000 slaves, in Illinois or in any other free state.
Auxiliary to all this, and working hand in hand with it, the Nebraska
doctrine, or what is left of it, is to educate and mold public opinion, at
least Northern public opinion, not to care whether slavery is voted down or
voted up. This shows exactly where we now are; and partially, also, whither
we are tending.
It will throw additional light on the latter to go back and run the mind
over the string of historical facts already stated. Several things will now
appear less dark and mysterious than they did when they were transpiring.
The people were to be left "perfectly free," "subject only to
the Constitution." What the Constitution had to do with it, outsiders
could not then see. Plainly enough, now, it was an exactly fitted niche for
the Dred Scott decision to afterward come in and declare the perfect freedom
of the people to be just no freedom at all.
Why was the amendment expressly declaring the right of the people voted
down? Plainly enough, now, the adoption of it would have spoiled the niche
for the Dred Scott decision. Why was the Court decision held up? Why even a
senator's individual opinion withheld till after the presidential election?
Plainly enough, now, the speaking out then would have damaged the
"perfectly free" argument upon which the election was to be
carried. Why the outgoing President's felicitation on the endorsement? Why
the delay of a reargument? Why the incoming President's advance exhortation
in favor of the decision? These things look like the cautious patting and
petting of a spirited horse preparatory to mounting him when it is dreaded
that he may give the rider a fall. And why the hasty after-endorsement of
the decision by the President and others?
We cannot absolutely know that all these exact adaptations are the result of
preconcert. But when we see a lot of framed timbers, different portions of
which we know have been gotten out at different times and places and by
different workmen -- Stephen, Franklin, Roger, and James, for instance --
and when we see these timbers joined together and see they exactly make the
frame of a house or a mill, all the tenons and mortises exactly fitting, and
all the lengths and proportions of the different pieces exactly adapted to
their respective places, and not a piece too many or too few, not omitting
even scaffolding, or, if a single piece be lacking, we see the place in the
frame exactly fitted and prepared yet to bring such piece in -- in such a
case, we find it impossible not to believe that Stephen and Franklin and
Roger and James all understood one another from the beginning, and all
worked upon a common plan or draft drawn up before the first blow was
struck.
