[00:00.65]Passage 28. A Divided House Cannot Stand
[00:06.89]If we could first know where we are, and whither we are tending,
[00:12.57]we could better judge what to do, and how to do it.
[00:16.62]We are now far into the fifth year since a policy was initiated with the avowed object
[00:23.84]and confident promise of putting an end to slavery agitation.
[00:28.88]Under the operation of that policy, that agitation has not only not ceased,
[00:35.44]but has constantly augmented.
[00:37.96]In my opinion, it will not cease until a crisis shall have been reached and passed.
[00:43.65]“A house divided against itself cannot stand.”
[00:47.26]I believe this government cannot endure permanently half slave and half free.
[00:53.71]I do not expect the Union to be dissolved;
[00:56.89]I do not expect the house to fall; but I do expect it will cease to be divided.
[01:03.45]It will become all one thing, or all the other.
[01:07.94]Either the opponents of slavery will arrest the further spread of it,
[01:12.97]and place it where the public mind shall rest in the belief that
[01:17.35]it is in the course of ultimate extinction,
[01:20.20]or its advocates will push it forward till it shall become alike lawful in all the States,
[01:26.97]old as well as new, North as well as South.
[01:30.91]Have we no tendency to the latter condition?
[01:34.63]Let any one who doubts, carefully contemplate that now almost complete legal combination
[01:41.20]—piece of machinery,so to speak—compounded of the Nebraska doctrine and the Dred Scott decision.
[01:49.07]Let him consider, not only what work the machinery is adapted to do,
[01:54.21]and how well adapted, but also let him
study the history of its construction,and trace,
[02:01.22]if he can, or rather fail, if he can, to trace the evidences of design
[02:07.67]and concert of action
among its chief architects from the beginning.
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