A House Still Divided

Editor’s Note: This article is part of a series that attempts to answer the question: Is democracy dying?

He stood on the outer edge of the sidewalk, hands clasped behind him—handcuffed, perhaps, by the immensity of the moment. He knew the city of Springfield, Illinois, well. But on June 16, 1858, Abraham Lincoln was learning his new place in American politics, and possibly dreading what it now demanded. He was about to deliver a speech accepting the nomination as the Republican Party’s candidate for the U.S. Senate. In it, he planned to diagnose a malignant divide many of his fellow Republicans believed was benign.

The speech was too radical, his friends had told him, as friends had told American revolutionaries a century earlier. Those revolutionaries had pressed on with their cause. Summoning the courage to press on with his, Lincoln may have reminded himself that ignoring the divide would be more radical still.

Delegates stared at Lincoln as they made their way to the Illinois state capitol. Patrons stared at him from the nearby dry-goods store owned by his friend John Williams. Lincoln believed that the slave states were staring at him, too—were eyeing the decision of 1857, all three branches of the federal government had acquiesced to the march of slaveholders across the nation.