Page:The World's Famous Orations Volume 9.djvu/233

 LINCOLN only has not ceased, but has constantly aug- mented. In my opinion, it will not cease until a crisis shall have been reached and passed. I believe this government can not endure perma- nently 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 that it will cease to be divided. | It wilh 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 unnoticed. Lincoln had taken extraordinary care in the prepara- tion of his speech. Herndon says : " He wrote on stray envelopes and scraps of paper as Ideas sug- gested themselves, putting them into that miscellaneous and con- venienti»receptacle, his hat. As the convention drew near, he copied the whole on connected sheets, carefully revising every line and sentence. He had studied and read over what he had written so long and carefully that he was able to deliver it without the least hesitation or difficulty. Before delivering it, he invited a dozen or so of his friends over to the library of the State House, where he read and submitted it to them. Some condemned, and not one in- dorsed it. But it suited my views, and I said: ' Lincoln, deliver that speech as read; it will make you president.' At the time I hardly realized the force of my prophecy. He rose from his chair, and, after alluding to the careful study and intense thought he had given the question, he answered all the objections substantially as fol- lows: * Friends, this thing has been retarded long enough. The time has come when these sentiments should be uttered, and if it is decreed that I should go down because of this speech, then let me go down linked to the truth— let me die in the advocacy of what is just and right.*** 223
 * 'A house divided against itself can not stand."