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."
During the entire decade from 1850 to 1860 the agitation of the slavery
question was at the boiling point, and events which have become
historical continually indicated the near approach of the overwhelming
storm. No sooner had the Compromise Acts of 1850 resulted in a temporary
peace, which everybody said must be final and perpetual, than new
outbreaks came. The forcible carrying away of fugitive slaves by Federal
troops from Boston agitated that ancient stronghold of freedom to its
foundations. The publication of Uncle Tom's Cabin, which truly exposed
the frightful possibilities of the slave system; the reckless attempts by
force and fraud to establish it in Kansas against the will of the vast
majority of the settlers; the beating of Summer in the Senate Chamber for
words spoken in debate; the Dred Scott decision in the Supreme Court,
which made the nation realize that the slave power had at last reached
the fountain of Federal justice; and finally the execution of John Brown,
for his wild raid into Virginia, to invite the slaves to rally to the
standard of freedom which he unfurled:--all these events tend to
illustrate and confirm Lincoln's contention that the nation could not
permanently continue half slave and half free, but must become all one
thing or all the other.
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