carefully prepared
words that he had yet spoken, and the most momentous that he had spoken
till now or perhaps ever spoke. There is nothing in them for which
what has been said of the situation and of his views will not have
prepared us, and nothing which thousands of men might not have said to
one another in private for a year or two before. But the first public
avowal by a responsible man in trenchant phrase, that a grave issue has
been joined upon which one party or the other must accept entire
defeat, may be an event of great and perilous consequence.

He said: "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 that 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 course of ultimate extinction, or its advocates will push it
forward till it shall become lawful alike in all the States, old as
well as new--North as well as South."

It may perhaps be said that American public opinion has in the past
been very timid in facing clear-cut issues. But, as has already been
observed, an apt phrase crystallising the unspoken thought of many is
even more readily caught up in America than anywhere else; so, though
but few people in States at a distance paid much attention to the rest
of the debates, or for a while again to Lincoln, the comparison of the
house divided against itself produced an effect in the country which
did not wear out. In this whole passage, moreover, Lincoln had
certainly formulated the question before the nation more boldly, more
clearly, more truly than any one before. It is impossible to estimate
such influences precisely, but this was among the speeches that rank as
important actions, and the story, most characteri