12. "A HOUSE DIVIDED"

On June 16, 1858, Lincoln took one of the most fateful steps of his career. The occasion was a speech delivered at the close of the Republican State Convention of Illinois which had just nominated him as the Republican Party's candidate for United States Senator. Before delivering his speech, Lincoln, on one of the rare occasions when he asked advice, called together a small group of party leaders and close friends and read to them the opening paragraph. Should he deliver it as written? With only one exception they all advised against it. They said to do so would bring ruin to him and the party in the forthcoming election. The one exception was William Herndon, Lincoln's law partner. He urged him to deliver it as written and declared that if he did so it would make him President. Lincoln gave the speech unchanged. As was foreseen by the shrewd party leaders, the advanced view caused alarm, and in the ensuing campaign Douglas made political capital of this fact. Lincoln was defeated; but the speech, and those that followed almost immediately in the famous debate with Douglas, marked Lincoln as a national figure.

Mr. President and Gentlemen of the Convention: If we could first know where we are, and whither we are tending, we could better judge what to do, and how to do it. We are now far into the fifth year since a policy was initiated with the avowed object and confident promise of putting an end to slavery agitation. Under the operation of that policy, that agitation has not only not ceased, but has constantly augmented. In my opinion, it will not cease until a crisis shall have been reached and passed. "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. 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.

LINCOLN SPRINGFIELD SPEECH, CLOSE OF REPUBLICAN STATE CONVENTION, JUNE 16, 1858.

13. POWER OF MEMORY

Lincoln possessed the faculty of memory in an unusually high degree. Apparently, he could remember with ease what he thought worthwhile retaining in his mind. Here, in the words of one who saw him at work almost daily for over 16 years, one glimpses the process by which Lincoln's great speeches took form.

Mr. Lincoln had keen susceptibilities to the hints, insinuations, and suggestions of nature and of man which put him in mind of something known or unknown; hence his power and tenacity of what is called the association of ideas must have been great; his memory was exceedingly retentive, tenacious, and strong; he could write out a speech, as in the Cooper Institute speech, and then repeat it word for word, without any effort on his part. This I know about the "house divided against itself" speech; he wrote that fine effort, an argumentative one, in slips, put those slips in his hat, numbering them, and when he was done with the ideas he gathered up the scraps, put them in the right order, and wrote out his speech, read it to me before it was delivered, and in the evening delivered it just as written without notes or finished speech; his susceptibilities to all suggestions and hints enabled him through his retentive memory at will to call up readily, quickly, and accurately the associated and classified fact, person, or idea.

HERNDON'S "NOTES AND MONOGRAPHS"

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