SPEECH, AT SPRINGFIELD, ILLINOIS, JUNE 16, 1858

Mr. President, and Gentlemen of the Convention: 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 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 the 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.

Have we no tendency to the latter condition?

Let any one who doubts carefully contemplate that now almost complete
legal combination---piece of machinery, so to speak--compounded of the
Nebraska doctrine and the Dred Scott decision. Let him consider not
only what work the machinery is adapted to do, and how well adapted;
but also let him study the history of its construction, and trace, if