Abraham Lincoln's "House Divided" speech, delivered on 16 June 1858, upon his acceptance as the Illinois Republican nominee for the U.S. Senate, was one of the strongest statements of the argument that a secret Democratic conspiracy was expanding and entrenching slavery. The workmen to whom he refers are Stephen A. Douglas, , Franklin Pierce, Roger B. Taney, and James Buchanan.

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...