"Speech of Hon. Abraham Lincoln, Delivered in Springfield, Saturday Evening, July 17, 1858."
- Creator(s):
- Lincoln, Abraham.
- Title:
- "Speech of Hon. Abraham Lincoln, Delivered in Springfield, Saturday Evening, July 17, 1858."
- Description:
- The Illinois Republican Party selected Lincoln to run against Democrat Stephen Douglas in the 1858 U.S. Senate election. The printing above is of Lincoln’s “House Divided” speech from the nominating convention in which he asserted that voters must choose between supporting or opposing slavery—there could be no middle ground. He memorably argued, “[T]his government cannot endure permanently half slave and half free. It will become all one thing or all the other.” This speech convinced Frederick Douglass that Lincoln might be capable of uniting “all the moral and political forces” opposing slavery.
- Source:
- Photograph by Vincent Dilio. Courtesy of David M. Rubenstein.
- Citation:
- Lincoln, Abraham. "Speech of Hon. Abraham Lincoln, Delivered in Springfield, Saturday Evening, July 17, 1858". [Springfield (IL): n.p., 1858].