in a
few more gentle breezes, and to combat with its mutilated limbs a few
more ruder storms, then to sink and be no more.

They _were_ pillars of the temple of liberty; and now that they have
crumbled away that temple must fall unless we, their descendants,
supply their places with other pillars, hewn from the solid quarry of
sober reason. Passion has helped us, but can do so no more. It will
in future be our enemy. Reason--cold, calculating, unimpassioned
reason--must furnish all the materials for our future support and
defence. Let those materials be moulded into _general intelligence,
sound morality_, and, in particular, _a reverence for the Constitution
and laws_; and that we improved to the last, that we remained free to
the last, that we revered his name to the last, that during his long
sleep we permitted no hostile foot to pass over or desecrate his
resting-place, shall be that which to learn the last trump shall awaken
our WASHINGTON.

Upon these let the proud fabric of freedom rest, as the rock of its
basis, and, as truly as has been said of the only greater institution,
"_the gates of hell shall not prevail against it_."

SPEECH, AT SPRINGFIELD, ILLINOIS, JUNE 16, 1858

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 any one who doubts carefully contemplate that now almost complete
lega