"Senator Douglas is of world-wide renown. All the anxious politicians
of his party have been looking upon him as certainly, at no distant
day, to be the President of the United States. They have seen in his
round, jolly, fruitful face post-offices, land offices, marshalships
and cabinet appointments, chargé-ships and foreign missions, bursting
and sprouting out in wonderful exuberance, ready to be laid hold of by
their greedy hands.... On the contrary, nobody has ever expected me to
be President. In my poor, lean, lank face nobody has ever seen that any
cabbages were sprouting out."--(Speech by A. Lincoln, Springfield,
Illinois, July 17, 1858.)
* * * * *
"A HOUSE DIVIDED CANNOT STAND."
This often-quoted passage was uttered in June, 1857, at Springfield,
Illinois, during Lincoln's congressional campaign:
"A house divided against itself cannot stand. I believe that this
government cannot endure permanently, half-slave and half-free. I do
not expect this house to fall: I do not expect the Union to be
dissolved. But I do expect it will cease to be divided. It will become
one thing or the other."
* * * * *