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The hostility of the Buchanan administration to Douglas for his part in
defeating the Lecompton Constitution, and the multiplying chances
against him, served only to stimulate his followers in Illinois to
greater efforts to secure his reelection. Precisely the same elements
inspired the hope and increased the enthusiasm of the Republicans of the
State to accomplish his defeat. For a candidate to oppose the "Little
Giant," there could be no rival in the Republican ranks to Abraham
Lincoln. He had in 1854 yielded his priority of claim to Trumbull; he
alone had successfully encountered Douglas in debate. The political
events themselves seemed to have selected and pitted these two champions
against each other. Therefore, when the Illinois State convention on
June 16, 1858, passed by acclamation a separate resolution, "That
Abraham Lincoln is the first and only choice of the Republicans of
Illinois for the United States Senate as the successor of Stephen A.
Douglas," it only recorded the well-known judgment of the party. After
its routine work was finished, the convention adjourned to meet again in
the hall of the State House at Springfield at eight o'clock in the
evening. At that hour Mr. Lincoln appeared before the assembled
delegates and delivered a carefully studied speech, which has become
historic. After a few opening sentences, he uttered the following
significant prediction:

"'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 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."

Then followed his critical analysis of the legislative objects and
consequences of the Nebraska Bill, and the judicial effects and
doctrines of the Dred Scott decision, with their attendant and related
incidents. The first of these had opened all the national territory to
slavery. The second established the constitutional interpretation that
neither Congress nor a territorial legislature could exclude slavery
from any United States ter