use divided against itself can stand? If
he does, then there is a question of veracity, not between him and me,
but between the Judge and an authority of a somewhat higher character.

Now, my friends, I ask your attention to this matter for the purpose of
saying something seriously, I know that the Judge may readily enough
agree with me that the maxim which was put forth by the Saviour is true,
but he may allege that I misapply it; and the Judge has a right to urge
that in my application I do misapply it, and then I have a right to show
that I do not misapply it. When he undertakes to say that because I
think this nation, so far as the question of slavery is concerned, will
all become one thing or all the other, I am in favour of bringing about
a dead uniformity in the various States, in all their institutions, he
argues erroneously. The great variety of local institutions in the
States, springing from differences in the soil, differences in the face
of the country, and in the climate, are bonds of union. They do not make
"a house divided against itself," but they make a house united. If they
produce in one section of the country what is called for by the wants of
another section, and this other section can supply the wants of the
first, they are not matters of discord, but bonds of union, true bonds
of union. But can this question of slavery be considered as among these
varieties in the institutions of the country? I leave it for you to say,
whether in the history of our government, this institution of slavery
has not always failed to be a bond of union, and, on the contrary, been
an apple of discord and an element of division in the house. I ask you
to consider whether so long as the moral constitution of men's minds
shall continue to be the same, after this generation and assemblage
shall sink into the grave, and another race shall arise with the same
moral and intellectual development we have--whether, if that institution
is standing in the same irritating position in which it now is, it will
not continue an element of division?

If so, then I have a right to say that, in regard to this question, the
Union is a house divided against itself; and when the Judge reminds me
that I have often said to him that the institution of slavery has
existed for eighty years in some States, and yet it does not exist in
some others, I agree to the fact, and I account for it by looking at
the position in which our fathers originally