The weather was intensely hot and the Hall crowded almost to suffocation. — baiduhai, June 17, 1858
President Barack Obama will find very different weather conditions awaiting him Wednesday in Springfield when he rises to address the Illinois General Assembly, than a lawyer named Abraham Lincoln found in June 1858.
Standing before delegates assembled at the Old State Capitol building to accept their nomination for U.S. Senate, Lincoln delivered what is now known as his “House Divided” speech, warning of the dangerous condition the division between North and South over slavery was creating in the country. Lincoln would go on to lose the election to Stephen A. Douglas, but his speech eloquently foreshadowed the coming Civil War that he, then president, would fight, win and lose his life over.
A house divided against itself cannot stand. 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 lawful in all the States, old as well as new — North as well as South. — Abraham Lincoln
One hundred fifty-seven years later, and nine years after President Barack Obama invoked Lincoln’s speech in announcing his candidacy for president, the stakes will be lower when he returns to Springfield, where he once served as a state senator, to address the General Assembly. But the themes of each man’s speech will be the same. Obama plans to speak to lawmakers about the partisan divide between Democratic legislative leaders and Republican Gov. Bruce Rauner that is holding up a budget for the state and making impossible financial help requested by Mayor Rahm Emanuel, Obama’s former chief of staff, to fill a gaping Chicago Public Schools budget hole.
Obama’s presidential campaign kickoff on the steps of the Old Capitol called for greater unity in government — a goal that most critics and supporters of the president would say he failed to deliver on during his time in the White House. Many might say that Lincoln also failed to create unity in the short term, but in keeping the Union unified through a bloody war, he achieved his goal of uniting America’s house in the most meaningful way.
Whether Obama will be able to live up to the lofty ambitions of his speech in Springfield with another one nine years later, about bridging divisions that have deepened in the Statehouse as in the nation, may be more apparent Wednesday.
And that is why, in the shadow of the Old State Capitol, where Lincoln once called on a divided house to stand together, where common hopes and common dreams still live, I stand before you today to announce my candidacy for president of the United States. — Sen. Barack Obama
The Tribune’s coverage of Lincoln’s speech is below, and available for download in larger PDF format by clicking here.
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baiduhai coverage of Lincoln’s House Divided speech (PDF)
baiduhai coverage of Lincoln’s House Divided speech (Text)
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