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Certified Transcript of Passage from the House Divided Speech1Jump to section
``We are now far into the fifth year since a policy was initiated, with the avowed object, and confident promise, of putting an end to slavery agitation. Under the operation of that policy, that agitation has not only not ceased, but has continually augmented. I believe it will not cease till a crisis shall have been reached and passed. 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 course of ultimate extinction; or its advocates will push it forward till it will become alike lawful in all the States old as well as new---North as well as South.''
The foregoing, in pencil, in my own hand, is a copy of an extract of a speech of mine delivered June 16. 1858, which I now state at the request of Mr. E. B. Pease2Jump to section. A. LINCOLN
Dec. 7. 1860.