rced concubinage of their masters, and
liable to become the mothers of mulattoes in spite of themselves,--the
very state of the case that produces nine-tenths of all the mulattoes,
all the mixing of the blood of the nation.

_"A house divided against itself cannot stand." On Lincoln's Nomination
to the United States Senate. Springfield, Illinois. June 17, 1858_

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.

Have we no tendency to the latter condition? Let any one who doubts,
carefully contemplate that now almost complete legal combination--piece
of machinery, so to speak--compounded of the Nebraska doctrine and the
Dred Scott decision. Let him consider not only what work the machinery
is adapted to do, and how well adapted; but also let him study the
history of its construction, and trace, if he can, or rather fail, if he
can, to trace the evidences of design and concert of action among its
chief architects from the beginning.

The new year of 1854 found slavery excluded from more than half the
States by State constitutions, and from most of the national territory
by congressional prohibition. Four days later commenced the struggle
which ended in repealing that congressional prohibition. This opened all
the national territory to slavery, and was the first point gained.

But so far, Congress only had acted; and an indorsement by the people,
real or apparent, was indispensable to save the point already gaine