Abraham Lincoln delivers his "House Divided Speech" while accepting the Illinois Republican Party's nomination for US Senate. In this speech, he paraphrase a passage from the New Testament: “a house divided against itself cannot stand.” to describe the United States' deep division over the issue of slavery. Lincoln believed that the nation could not long endure with the fundamental contradiction of being half slave and half free.
He argued that the country would eventually have to become "all one thing, or all the other," either fully embracing or fully rejecting slavery. His use of this powerful biblical quotation, articulated the moral and political crisis facing the nation and contributed to his rising national prominence, although he lost the Senate race to Stephen Douglas. More
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