Abraham Lincoln gave his famous “a house divided against itself cannot stand” speech on June 16, 1858, before the Republican State Convention in Springfield, Ill.
He was the Republican candidate for U.S. Senate, and he lost to Democrat Stephen A. Douglas. The issue fracturing the nation was slavery.
Lincoln went on to say that the union would not be dissolved and it would not fall, but “it will become all one thing or all the other.” This is exactly the predicament our country is in now.