History Teaches - June 16

[azmouse]

June 16, 1858: Lincoln delivers "House Divided" speech

The speech started Abraham Lincoln's unsuccessful campaign against Stephen Douglas for the Senate seat in Illinois in 1858. Lincoln felt the country needed to become either all slave or all free, and the country could not move forward until the issue was resolved.

This is the best known passage:

"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."

[jaxx]

I don't think you could have posted a more current historical moment than that one azmouse. We are again a house divided.

[azmouse]

(06-16-2011 02:38 PM)jaxx Wrote:  I don't think you could have posted a more current historical moment than that one azmouse. We are again a house divided.

To read Lincoln's or FDR's speeches serves to remind me how those same speeches could be given today and still be relevant.