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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from The Boys' Life of Abraham Lincoln by Helen Nicolay: and to warn people of the peril that menaced the land. Already in
June he had made a speech that greatly impressed his hearers. "A
house divided against itself cannot stand," he told them. "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"; and he
went on to say that there was grave danger it might become all
slave. He showed how, little by little, slavery had been gaining
ground, until all it lacked now was another Supreme Court
decision to make it alike lawful in all the States, North as well
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