House Divided Speech

Content Warning: The source material and this guide reference the enslavement of Black Americans and the associated racism and prejudice.

Often regarded by scholars as the most influential and greatest president of the United States, Lincoln led the Union through the Civil War. His Emancipation Proclamation, which ultimately led to the 13th Amendment to the Constitution, ended slavery in the United States. During his fabled childhood in a Kentucky log cabin, Lincoln educated himself, rising to become a lawyer, politician, and eventually a US congressman from Illinois. A tall, gaunt, and bearded man, Lincoln solidified his legacy as a persuasive speaker. Lincoln left politics in 1849 after serving only a single term in Congress. He returned to his law practice in Illinois, reentering politics in the mid-1850s in response to the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act, which he strongly condemned.

In 1858, he challenged Stephen A. Douglas for his US Senate seat from Illinois. Lincoln and Douglas engaged each other in a series of public debates, which would become known to history as the Lincoln-Douglas debates. The central issue of these debates was the future of slavery in the United States. Douglas advocated for “popular sovereignty,” or that the status of slavery in new territories would be determined by popular vote. Lincoln softened the position he had initially taken in the “A House Divided” speech, arguing that slavery should not be expanded to new territories, but that it could continue in states in which it had already been established.

While Lincoln lost the senatorial contest, it proved to be an opportunity for publicity that enabled him to obtain the Republican nomination for president of the United States in 1860. Lincoln won that election, defeating Douglas, who had secured the Democratic Party nomination, and two other candidates. With Lincoln’s election, the southern states seceded from the Union and the Civil War began. Lincoln proved to be an effective but authoritative leader, taking unprecedented liberty in interpreting the Constitutional powers of the presidency. Most notably, to control Confederate sympathizers, Lincoln suspended the constitutional right of habeas corpus, the right of an imprisoned person to petition the court for release. The Emancipation Proclamation, which freed enslaved persons held in the disloyal states, was justified by the president’s power as Commander-in-Chief. On November 19, 1863, Lincoln dedicated the battlefield at Gettysburg, in what became known as the Gettysburg Address. One of the most famous political speeches in history, the Address reaffirmed Thomas Jefferson’s statement, in the Declaration of Independence, that “all men are created equal.” The address recast the war, which had reached a turning point, in moral, anti-slavery terms.

With victory at hand, Lincoln and his advisers turned themselves to the question of how the United States would be rebuilt in the wake of the war. In his Second Inaugural Address, in a gesture to the bloody conflict that had occurred, Lincoln called on Americans to “bind up the nation’s wounds,” in both literal and figurative terms (Lincoln, Abraham. “Second Inaugural Address.” National Constitution Center). Lincoln’s policies, which favored citizenship for formerly enslaved persons, angered southerners intent on white supremacy. On April 11, 1865, Lincoln was assassinated by John Wilkes Booth, a famous stage actor and Confederate spy. Although his untimely death prevented Lincoln from overseeing the great work of reconstruction, the nation was nonetheless rebuilt, under the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments, according to his design. While much work remained to be done, Lincoln had taken the first steps to achieving racial justice in the United States.