178 A House Divided (1858)
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 for into the fifth year since a policy was initialed 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 housedivided 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” otherwise 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 . . . 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 was passing through the United States Circuit Court for the District of Missouri . . . Before the then next presidential election, the law case came to and was argued in the Supreme Court of the United States . . .
The election came. Mr. Buchanan was elected and the endorsement, such as it was, secured. That was the second point gained . . . 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.
We cannot absolutely know that all these exact adaptations are the result of preconcert [collusion]. 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 [Douglas], Franklin [Pierce], Roger [Taney], and James [Buchanan], for instance, — and 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 arid 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 titled 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.
Source: Abraham Lincoln, Complete Works (1894), I, 240-243. https://archive.org/details/americanhistoryt00ivunse/page/136/mode/2up
