can someone please explain to me this part of Lincoln's first innagual speech?

Question

One section of our country believes slavery is right, and ought to be extended, while the other believes it is wrong, and ought not to be extended. This is the only substantial dispute. The fugitive slave clause of the Constitution, and the law for the suppression of the foreign slave trade, are each as well enforced, perhaps, as any law can ever be in a community where the moral sense of the people imperfectly supports the law itself. The great body of the people abide by the dry legal obligation in both cases, and a few break over in each. This, I think, cannot be perfectly cured, and it would be worse in both cases after the separation of the sections, than before. The foreign slave trade, now imperfectly suppressed, would be ultimately revived without restriction, in one section; while fugitive slaves, now only partially surrendered, would not be surrendered at all, by the other.
Physically speaking, we cannot separate. We can not remove our respective sections from each other, nor build an impassable wall between them. A husband and wife may be divorced, and go out of the presence, and beyond the reach of each other; but the different parts of our country cannot do this. They cannot but remain face to face; and intercourse, either amicable or hostile, must continue between them. Is it possible, then, to make that intercourse more advantageous or more satisfactory, after separation than before? Can aliens make treaties easier than friends can make laws? Can treaties be more faithfully enforced between aliens than laws can among friends? Suppose you go to war, you cannot fight always; and when, after much loss on both sides, and no gain on either, you cease fighting, the identical old questions, as to terms of intercourse, are again upon you.
This country, with its institutions, belongs to the people who inhabit it. Whenever they shall grow weary of the existing Government, they can exercise their constitutional right of amending it, or their revolutionary right to dismember or overthrow it. I cannot be ignorant of the fact that many worthy and patriotic citizens are desirous of having the national Constitution amended. While I make no recommendation of amendments, I fully recognize the rightful authority of the people over the whole subject to be exercised in either of the modes prescribed in the instrument itself; and I should, under existing circumstances, favor rather than oppose a fair opportunity being afforded the people to act upon it.

Answer 1

Lincoln was saying that the nation as a whole had to work out the 'slavery question' and warning against succession from the union. While Lincoln didn't like slavery it was legal and he wasn't about to declare it illegal (not that he could according to the Constitution), southern states were talking succession and he was trying to stop it, without going to war.

Answer 2

He was trying to get America to resolve the crisis slavery was causing by pointing out how it was dividing us and how the divisions could only be worse after an attempt to sovle the problem by dividing the country. We can't escape each other, he pointed out, and we won't have resolved a thing by separating that we won't have to deal with after the separation.

In fact, things would be worse, as we'd have unleashed what restraint the north puts on the south (and he throws the slavers a bone by mentioning the fugitive slave act - enforced, he said, as often as any decent person could bear to enforce such an odious act.)

Given that, separate or not, we'll still have to deal with each other, we should not separate, because isn't it easier to settle something within a country than between two countries?

It's very interesting that in his farewell address, washington talked of north and south and our other divisions and decried them. At another point, tho, he said that if this country divides north and south on the slave question, he was 'a northerner.'

Answer 3

hes saying the country is split on 2 different veiws and no matter what you do people will always have a mind of their own and he will listen to both sides fairly.