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Introduction

A few weeks after having been elected president as a dark horse candidate of a new and largely sectional party, Abraham Lincoln was asked for a handwritten copy of the famous “House Divided” speech he had given when nominated for the Senate in 1858. Provocative and controversial, the “House Divided” may actually have cost Lincoln the Senate seat in 1858, but it ultimately rallied Republicans across the north and called national attention to both the man and his message: “A house divided against itself can not stand.”

Abraham Lincoln, excerpt from the House Divided speech: autograph manuscript
Springfield, 7 Dec. 1860
AMs 1083/14

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