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 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.

Mr. Jeriah Bonham, an old citizen of Illinois, relates that he was present as a delegate at the Springfield convention and heard the famous speech of Lincoln.  According to Mr. Bonham, “The speech was prepared with unusual care, every paragraph and sentence carefully weighed.  The firm bedrock of principles, the issues of the campaign on which he proposed to stand and fight his battles, were all well considered, and his arguments were incontrovertible.  In that memorable speech culminated all the grand thoughts he had ever uttered, embodying divinity, statesmanship, law, and morals, and even fraught with prophecy.  As he advanced in this argument he towered to his full height, forgetting himself entirely as he grew warm in his work.  Men and women who heard that speech well remember the wonderful transformation wrought in Lincoln’s appearance.  The plain, homely man towered up majestically; his face lit as with angelic light; the long, bent, angular figure, like the strong oak of the forest, stood erect, and his eyes flashed with the fire of inspiration.”

The party that had nominated Lincoln for the Senate was not prepared to endorse his restriction of the coming struggle to the single issue of the slavery question.  His friends dreaded the result of his uncompromising frankness, while politicians quite generally condemned it.  Even so stanch a friend as Leonard Swett, whose devotion to Lincoln never wavered throughout his whole career, shared these apprehensions.  Says Mr. Swett:  “The first ten lines of that speech defeated him.  The sentiment of the ‘house divided against itself’ seemed wholly inappropriate.  It was a speech made at the commencement of a campaign, and apparently made for the campaign.  Viewing it in this light alone, nothing could have been more unfortunate or inappropriate.  It was saying the wrong thing first; yet he felt that it was an abstract truth, and that standing by the speech would ultimately find him in the right place.  I was inclined at the time to believe these words were hastily and inconsiderately uttered; but subsequent facts have convinced me they were deliberate and had been well matured.”