but he may allege that I misapply it; and the Judge has a right to urge
that, in my application, I do misapply it, and then I have a right to
show that I do not misapply it, When he undertakes to say that because I
think this nation, so far as the question of slavery is concerned, will
all become one thing or all the other, I am in favor of bringing about a
dead uniformity in the various States, in all their institutions, he
argues erroneously. The great variety of the local institutions in the
States, springing from differences in the soil, differences in the face
of the country, and in the climate, are bonds of Union. They do not make
"a house divided against itself," but they make a house united. If they
produce in one section of the country what is called for, by the wants of
another section, and this other section can supply the wants of the
first, they are not matters of discord, but bonds of union, true bonds of
union. But can this question of slavery be considered as among these
varieties in the institutions of the country? I leave it to you to say
whether, in the history of our government, this institution of slavery
has not always failed to be a bond of union, and, on the contrary, been
an apple of discord and an element of division in the house. I ask you to
consider whether, so long as the moral constitution of men's minds shall
continue to be the same, after this generation and assemblage shall sink
into the grave, and another race shall arise, with the same moral and
intellectual development we have, whether, if that institution is
standing in the same irritating position in which it now is, it will not
continue an element of division? If so, then I have a right to say that,
in regard to this question, the Union is a house divided against itself;
and when the Judge reminds me that I have often said to him that the
institution of slavery has existed for eighty years in some States, and
yet it does not exist in some others, I agree to the fact, and I account
for it by looking at the position in which our fathers originally placed
it--restricting it from the new Territories where it had not gone, and