What does Abraham Lincoln mean when he said "a house divided"?

Question

he said it in his speech containing this quote, "A house divided against itself cannot stand". I am just wondering what he is referring to when he says house. Does he mean the government or the country? I want definite answers, not just guesses. try to list the source if you can so i can verify your answer

Answer 1

In 1854 Lincoln campaigned for the election to Congress of Richard Yates, an antislavery Whig, on a platform of opposition to the Kansas-Nebraska Act. However, Lincoln was after bigger game. His target was none other than Douglas himself, whose nickname was "The Little Giant."
In October 1854, Douglas came to Springfield to defend the Kansas-Nebraska Act. After Douglas spoke, Lincoln mounted the speaker's platform and announced that he would answer Douglas's speech the next night. For days, Lincoln had haunted the state library, read congressional documents, and organized his arguments against slavery. The next night, in his shirtsleeves and without a collar or tie, Lincoln spoke. Attacking the Kansas-Nebraska Act itself, he said: "The Missouri Compromise forbade slavery to go north of 36°30'. Our government breaks down that restriction and opens the door for slavery to enter where it could not go. This is practically legislating for slavery, recognizing it, extending it."
Douglas had spoken of slavery only as a political issue. The morality of the institution did not concern him. To Lincoln, however, slavery was both a political and a moral issue. "It is said," Lincoln continued, "that the slaveholder has the same political right to take his Negroes to Kansas that a freeman has to take his hogs or his horses. This would be true if Negroes were property in the same sense that hogs and horses are. But is this the case? It is notoriously not so."
To Lincoln, slavery was incompatible with American democracy. "When the white man governs himself," he said, "that is self-government; but when he governs himself, and also governs another man-that is despotism. If the ***** is a man, why then my ancient faith teaches me that 'all men are created equal,' and that there can be no moral right in connection with one man's making a slave of another."
Lincoln avoided abolitionist doctrine, taking the view that slavery was a national problem, not merely a Southern one. "I think," he went on, "I would not hold one in slavery, at any rate, yet the point is not clear enough for me to denounce people upon .…It does seem to me that some system of gradual emancipation might be adopted, but for their tardiness in this, I will not undertake to judge our brethren of the South." Lincoln repeated this speech in Peoria, Illinois, 12 days later. It has become known as his Peoria speech.
Despite his new role as a spokesman for the antislavery forces in Illinois, Lincoln declined to join the Republican Party, then being formed on an abolition platform. The Whig Party was in rapid decline, but Lincoln remained with it until its death. In 1855 he was the Whig candidate for the U.S. Senate, the upper chamber of Congress. U.S. senators were then elected by the state legislatures. Lincoln led for seven ballots. Then, seeing that he could not win, he threw his support to an anti-Douglas Democrat, Lyman Trumbull, who was elected.

Answer 2

A Nation Divided Quote

Answer 3

Your absolutely correct for once, a house divided can't stand. That is exactly why the Chinese communist system is slowly and steadily dying each day. Which explains why the CCP must keep such a tight leash on its people so that the whole country doesn't fall apart. If they didn't keep a constant state of martial law the government would have collapsed by now, and the ROC would have returned 30-40 years ago. Just like with the America the rebelling governing body, (in America's case the Confederacy, in China's case the CCP) should reunite with original government and strengthen the country instead of tearing it apart even more. Shouldn't China's CCP overlords accept the wisdom of Abraham Lincoln and reunify with the Republic of China? Taiwan as never been apart of the PRC and constantly saying "reunify" doesn't make the word a magic wand that will rewrite history to make it true.

Answer 4

Country

Answer 5

Basic answer -

Well, in the context, I'm not quite sure what the difference might be. Lincoln spoke of both "government" and "Union" (his word for the country/nation). We find this in the very next sentence after his "house divided" quote. Note the capitalized words:

"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."
http://www.nationalcenter.org/HouseDivided.html

I suppose if forced to choose, I would say "government", since the issue IS what the legal status of slavery will be.. how the laws will treat it, etc. Perhaps that's what you have in mind.

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To fill this out -- the rest of the paragraph clarifies the question of 'divided/united in what way?' as follows:

"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 alike lawful in all the States, old as well as new, North as well as South"

If you read through the rest of the speech in context it becomes apparent what Lincoln is arguing. This speech, given June 16, 1858 while accepting the Republican nomination for the U.S. Senate from Illinois, was the first salvo in his challenge to the approach to the slavery issue by Stephen Douglas (and the Democratic Party), the beginning of an argument pursued in the famous Lincoln-Douglas debates.

The following paragraphs go on to rehearse the actions of the Democrats on this issue (esp of slavery in the TERRITORIES), which he sees as tending in the "latter" direction - of making slavery lawful in ALL states, focusing esp on the Kansas-Nebraska Act [of 1854] and the Dred Scott decision [of 1857]. (He acknowledges a struggle between Douglas and President Buchanan --over the legitimacy of the pro-slavery Lecompton Constitution for Kansas, but argues it doesn't amount to any real difference in principle.)

For more analysis of this speech and its importance, as well as its connection with the Lincoln-Douglas debates, check out these links:
http://www.claremont.org/publications/pubid.666/pub_detail.asp
http://www.mrlincolnandfreedom.org/inside.asp?ID=17&subjectID=2

Answer 6

He meant a nation divided, giving the metaphor of a house as a family. If a family is divided the isn't a family.

Answer 7

He was refering to the country. In other words if the country was divided into the north and south it could never exist as a country. As many did in those days he believed that the north and south must remain united and the north and south could never be allowed to divide into two countries. In fact that was the reason for the civil war. If the north had not wanted to remain united they would have told the south to go on their way. I mean the north had most of the wealth and inventions. All the south had to offer was cotton production was useless without the northern textile mills anyway. The confederate states would have been a poor country without trading with the north. The northerners were so determined to keep the southern states in the union that they were willing to fight to make it so.....and the civil war began.

Answer 8

He is using it as a metaphor to describe the state of the nation at the time, in that a country that is divided will only fall apart.

Answer 9

He was alluding to a biblical quote, in reference to the US being divided, north VS south, in the pre-Civil War days.

Answer 10

Beau's correct!