Lincoln's House Divided Speech

"The evening session was mainly devoted to speeches",[1] but the only speaker was Lincoln, whose address closed the convention, save for resolutions of thanks to the city of Springfield and others.

When Lincoln collected and published his debates with Douglas as part of his 1860 presidential campaign, he prefixed them with relevant prior speeches.

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 lawful in all the States, old as well as new – North as well as South.

Lincoln, however, responded that the Dred Scott ruling had closed the door on Douglas's preferred option, leaving the Union with only two remaining outcomes: the country would inevitably become either all slave or all free.

Early Christians: It also appears in widely-read English writers: In the United States: However and most relevantly, the expression was used repeatedly earlier in 1858 in discussions of the situation in Kansas, where slavery was the central issue.