A house divided

No American is more associated with abolishing slavery than Abraham Lincoln.  

It was always a shock to my high school history students - as it had been to me - to learn that Lincoln emancipated the slaves for practical reasons that had nothing to do with any personal support of abolition.  No one could have been clearer than the man himself, expressed clearly in his First Inaugural - 
I have no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere with the institution of slavery in the States where it exists. I believe I have no lawful right to do so, and I have no inclination to do so.~ ~ Those who nominated and elected me did so with full knowledge that I had made this and many similar declarations and had never recanted them.

What Lincoln WAS for, body & soul, was the preserving the Union.  Whatever his personal beliefs, the political qualms he had with slavery related to how that "peculiar institution" threatened the United States with discord & bloodshed.  

By the time Lincoln ran for the presidency, the country had been thrown into a tailspin by Roger B. Taney's Supreme Court.  When I first learned about the Dred Scott decision, back in 7th grade, it was presented as the court ruling against his claim to be free by virtue of having been taken to a free state.  I hadn't a clue that the decision had as deep an impact on our nation as it did on that hapless individual.  I certainly had no sense of how the SCOTUS decision had further poisoned already past-toxic relations between the regions - north, south, territories.  

Looking at his 1858 "House Divided" speech, Lincoln starts out downright Biblical - Mark 3:25, "If a house is divided against itself, that house cannot stand."  He then goes on to lay out the realities of the American situation:
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.

In a nutshell - Lincoln believes our national government cannot continue as it was, half slave & half free.  He believes the Union will hold, but the division will stop, becoming all the one or all the other.  His tone seems to indicate he isn't invested in either outcome, while his arguments for & against make it clear which is the humanitarian choice.

The speech is worth a read, then another read.  The man was beyond masterly with his words.  It's like he came from another dimension of reality, he was so nibble with phrasing, so clear in his content & context.  

And he always spoke - eloquently, forcefully - out of two sides of his mouth at the same time.  Always, he'd argue that he didn't care about whether the country went all slave or all free, as long as it stayed politically united, but his details always made the reader come to the same conclusion - slavery had to go.  His sound bites said "No no!" to the need to abolish slavery, but a full read said "Yes yes!"

Jefferson was a man torn between his sensibilities as a human being, a man who saw the horrors of slavery to the individual & to the country, and as a plantation owner whose prosperity rested on the shoulders & in the hands of over 200 slaves.  He could not bring himself to be all one or all the other.  

Lincoln wasn't torn.  Too pragmatic.  And always aware that his personal feelings were secondary to his role as Chief Executive sworn to uphold the Constitution - which protected slavery in states that wanted it.  It astonishes me how he juggled so many different political balls at the same time.  He never lost sight of the prize - preserving the Union.  

Was it so much malarky when he said that he didn't care if the country went all slave or all free, as long as the Union held?  On some level, I think he believed just that - if it took our nation embracing slavery in every state & territory to preserve the Union, then that's what he'd support.  

And he knew it never would.  That being so, for the Union to be preserved, slavery had to go.  Because of one simple fact - a house divided against itself cannot stand.