Read the following excerpt from Abraham Lincoln's "House Divided" speech given in 1858. Which of the following best summarizes t
his excerpt? If we could first know where we are and whither we are tending, we could better judge what to do and how to do it. 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 constantly augmented. In my opinion, it will not cease until 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 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. 7
A. The United States is too divided to determine what to do about slavery.
B. The U.S. government will collapse if it abolishes slavery.
C. The United States must eventually abolish slavery and free all enslaved people.
D. The U.S. government must decide whether to allow slavery completely or abolish it.
Abraham Lincoln, in his "House Divided" speech pronounced in 1858, claimed that the US would eventually become either a free or a slave nation, but the that the division in two confronted halves could not be sustained and would be disastrous for the Union as a whole if a final decision on the issue could not be reached.
The speech was the beginning of Lincoln's unsucessful campaign to become US Senator, against Stephen A. Douglas. There were many iconic Lincoln-Douglas debates during such campaign.
