Home » A House Divided - The Winter of Secession

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"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." Lincoln's 'House-Divided' Speech in Springfield, Illinois, June 16, 1858.  

Lincoln's speech during his campaign for president was, like many of his observations, both prescient and profound. Lincoln had expressed the feeling that had been fomenting in both the north and the south for almost three decades - that slavery had created a chasm between the two regions, setting the two at odds, and that this untenable situation could not continue much longer.

Whether or not because of his controversial "house divided" speech, Lincoln was elected to the presidency, along with the relatively new republican party, in 1860, an election that the southern slaveholding states took as a personal affront. The election of Lincoln and a whole slate of republican - and anti-slavery - candidates to congress meant that the institution of slavery was threatened as it had never been before. the delicate balance of northern and southern interests in congress had been upset, and the southern states could no longer be assured that their agendas would be protected in congress. Secession began to look more and more viable.

Many in the south perceived Lincoln's "house divided" speech as a declaration of war - a war on slavery. a feeling of anger and disenfranchisement suffused the south the winter following lincoln's election, a winter that was to become the winter of secession, which began almost as soon as Lincoln was elected, was ushered in by the South Carolina secession convention, which convened in December of 1860. By December 24, South Carolina adopted the "declaration of the immediate causes which induce and justify the secession of south Carolina from the federal union," and in effect left the union.

The declaration adopted by South Carolina outlined the legality of the decision to secede, while also delineating the reasons for secession, among them the north's refusal to abide by the fugitive slave act, which was seen as an affront to slaveowners throughout the south, the elevation of blacks to citizenship, and, most tellingly, the election of Lincoln, "because he has declared that 'government cannot endure permanently half slave, half free,' and that the public mind must rest in the belief that slavery is in the course of ultimate extinction."

Before Lincoln ever took office on march 4, 1861, seven states - South Carolina, Louisiana, Mississippi, Florida, Texas, Alabama and Georgia - had seceded from the union, and had formed the Confederate States of American. After Fort Sumter was fired upon, and Lincoln called for troops, in effect beginning the Civil War, Virgina, Arkansas, North Carolina, and Tennessee had also seceded, joining the Confederacy.

Lincoln's "house divided" speech had touched a nerve in the South. While Lincoln's meaning may have been misunderstood, Southerners took his words to mean that as president, Lincoln would not allow his house - the union - to stand divided, and would abolish slavery if need be. The chasm, the division between the states that had been widening for years had now become unbridgeable. and true to Lincoln's words, the house divided against itself did not stand, did not endure half-slave and half-free.