Lincoln, Abraham, 1809-1865 "House divided" speech fragment re: slavery, Dred Scott, Kansas
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Gilder Lehrman Collection #: GLC02533 Author/Creator: Lincoln, Abraham, 1809-1865 Place Written: Springfield, Illinois Type: Autograph manuscript Date: December 1857 Pagination: 1 p. : Height: 30.6 cm, Width: 19.7 cm Order a Copy PDF Download(s): PDF of image and transcript
A single page beginning "Why Kansas is neither the whole, nor a tithe of the real question." Written before the debates with Stephen A. Douglas, apparently in response to that Senator's Dec. 9, 1857 speech in opposition to Buchanan's State of the Union address (as suggested by Don Fehrenbacher, "House Divided," 89 ff.). Nicolay and Hay date the metaphor from Oct. 1858 while Basler assigns it to May 1858. Unpublished and unrecorded. Current dating is based upon Don E. Fehrenbacher's hypothesis that this speech responds to Stephen A. Douglas's speech in the Senate of 1857 Dec. 9 (Prelude to Greatness, chap. 4).
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