When Lincoln and his friends in Illinois determined to fight Douglas, it became impossible for the Republican party as a whole to fall far behind them.  This was in itself at that crisis an important thing.  Lincoln added greatly to its importance by the opening words in the first speech of his campaign.  They were the most 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 characteristic of the speaker, which lay behind it, is worth relating in detail.  Lincoln had actually in a speech in 1856 declared that the United States could not long endure half