Cover not available
Part of
Political Argumentation in the United States: Historical and contemporary studies
David Zarefsky
[Argumentation in Context 7] 2014
► pp. 125–154

Lincoln and the House Divided

Launching a national political career

The most important need Abraham Lincoln faced as the Republican nominee for the U.S. Senate seat from Illinois in 1858 was to distinguish himself sharply from the incumbent, Stephen A. Douglas, to lessen the risk that Republicans would support Douglas as the best means to achieve their own goals. The House Divided Speech can be understood as a response to this need. He asserted that the country was tending toward nationwide slavery as the result of a conspiratorial effort and that Douglas was part of the plot. He attempted to make these claims credible in the absence of direct evidence by employing a number of rhetorical moves ranging from abductive reasoning to the use of vivid images and metaphors. The conclusion suggested that if Douglas was not an active conspirator, he was at least an unwitting dupe. Although not successful in winning Lincoln a Senate seat, the speech helped to launch his national political career.

Published online: 24 September 2014
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/aic.7.07ch7
References
Angle, P.M
(Ed.) (1991 [1958] The complete Lincoln-Douglas debates of 1858. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Basler, R.P
(Ed.) (1953) The collected works of Abraham Lincoln. 8 vols. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press.Google Scholar
Briggs, J.C
(2005) Lincoln’s speeches reconsidered. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.Google Scholar
Burke, K
(1937) Attitudes toward history. Boston: Beacon Press.Google Scholar
Burlingame, M
(2008) Abraham Lincoln: A life. 2 vols. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.Google Scholar
Davis, D.B
(1969) The slave power conspiracy and the paranoid style. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press.Google Scholar
Donald, D
(1995) Lincoln. New York: Simon and Schuster.Google Scholar
Eemeren, F.H. van, Grootendorst, R. & Snoeck Henkemans, A.F
(2002) Argumentation: Analysis, evaluation, presentation. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.Google Scholar
Fehrenbacher, D.E
(1962) Prelude to greatness: Lincoln in the 1850s. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
(1978) The Dred Scott case: Its significance in American law & politics. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Foner, E
(1970) Free soil, free labor, free men: The ideology of the Republican Party before the Civil War. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Govier, T
(1987) A practical study of argument. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth.Google Scholar
Graber, M.A
(2006) Dred Scott and the problem of Constitutional evil. New York: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Harris, W.C
(2007) Lincoln’s rise to the presidency. Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas.Google Scholar
Herndon, W. & Weik, J
(1930) Herndon’s Lincoln. New York: Albert & Charles Boni.Google Scholar
Holt, M.F
(1978) The political crisis of the 1850s. New York: Wiley.Google Scholar
(1999) The rise and fall of the American Whig Party: Jacksonian politics and the onset of the Civil War. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Holzer, H
(2004) Lincoln at Cooper Union: The speech that made Abraham Lincoln president. New York: Simon and Schuster.Google Scholar
Howe, D.W
(1979) The political culture of the American Whigs. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Johannsen, R.W
(1973) Stephen A. Douglas. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
(1991) Lincoln, the South, and slavery: The political dimension. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press.Google Scholar
Leff, M.C
(1983) Rhetorical timing in Lincoln’s “House Divided” speech. The Van Zelst Lecture in Communication. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University.Google Scholar
Lehrman, L.E
(2008) Lincoln at Peoria: The turning point. Mechanicsburg, PA: Stackpole.Google Scholar
Levine, B
(1992) Half slave and half free: The roots of civil war. New York: Hill & Wang.Google Scholar
Nevins, A
(1950) The emergence of Lincoln: Douglas, Buchanan, and party chaos, 1857–1859. New York: Scribners.Google Scholar
Perelman, Ch. & Olbrechts-Tyteca, L
(1969) The new rhetoric: A treatise on argumentation (J. Wilkinson & P. Weaver, Trans.) Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press. (Originally published in French in 1958.)Google Scholar
Pfau, M.W
(1999) The house that Abe built: The “House Divided” speech and Republican Party politics. Rhetoric & Public Affairs, 2:625–651. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
(2005) The political style of conspiracy. East Lansing: Michigan State University Press.Google Scholar
Potter, D.M
(1976) The impending crisis, 1848–1861. New York: Harper and Row.Google Scholar
Richards, L.L
(2000) The slave power: The free North and Southern domination, 1790–1860. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press.Google Scholar
Silbey, J.H
(2005) Storm over Texas: The annexation controversy and the road to civil war. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Walton, D.N
(2004) Abductive reasoning. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press.Google Scholar
White, R.C. Jr
(2009) A. Lincoln: A biography. New York: Random House.Google Scholar
Wilentz, S
(2005) The rise of American democracy: Jefferson to Lincoln. New York: Norton.Google Scholar
(2009) Who Lincoln was. The New Republic, July 15, pp. 24–47.Google Scholar
Zarefsky, D
(1990) Lincoln, Douglas, and slavery: In the crucible of public debate. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
(1994) “Public sentiment is everything”: Lincoln’s view of political persuasion. Journal of the Abraham Lincoln Association. 15, no. 2: 23–40. (Reprinted in this volume, Chapter 6.)Google Scholar