“‘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 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.”

Then followed his critical analysis of the legislative objects and consequences of the Nebraska Bill, and the judicial effects and doctrines of the Dred Scott decision, with their attendant and related incidents.  The first of these had opened all the national territory to slavery.  The second established the constitutional interpretation that neither Congress nor a territorial legislature could exclude slavery from any United States territory.  The President had declared Kansas to be already practically a slave State.  Douglas had announced that he did not care whether slavery was voted down or voted up.  Adding to these many other indications of current politics, Mr. Lincoln proceeded: 

“Put this and that together, and we have another nice little niche, which we may, ere long, see filled with another Supreme Court decision declaring that the Constitution of the United States does not permit a State to exclude slavery from its limits....  Such a decision is all that slavery now lacks of being alike lawful in all the States....  We shall lie down pleasantly dreaming that the people of Missouri are on the verge of making their State free, and we shall awake to the reality, instead, that the Supreme Court has made Illinois a slave State.”

To avert this danger, Mr. Lincoln declared it was the duty of Republicans to overthrow both Douglas and the Buchanan political dynasty.

“Two years ago the Republicans of the nation mustered over thirteen hundred thousand strong.  We did this under the single impulse of resistance to a common danger, with every external circumstance against us.  Of strange, discordant, and even hostile elements, we gathered from the four winds, and formed and fought the battle through, under the constant hot fire of a disciplined, proud, and pampered enemy.  Did we brave all then to falter now?—­now, when that same enemy is wavering, dissevered, and belligerent?  The result is not doubtful.  We shall not fail—­if we stand firm, we shall not fail.  Wise counsels may accelerate or mistakes delay it, but, sooner or later, the victory is sure to come.”

Lincoln’s speech excited the greatest interest everywhere throughout the free States.  The grave peril he so clearly pointed out came home to the people of the North almost with the force of a revelation; and thereafter their eyes were fixed upon the Illinois senatorial campaign with undivided attention.  Another incident also drew to it the equal notice and interest of the politicians of the slave States.