House Divided Speech Analysis

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During the Republican State Convention on June 16, 1858, Abraham Lincoln delivered an acceptance speech that would be known as both preeminent and prophetic—the House Divided speech. While this speech stands as one of Lincoln’s most famous speeches and a force that propelled his launch to presidency in 1860, the House Divided speech also serves as a historical document that is in direct dialogue with Walt Whitman’s poem, “Song of Myself” of 1855. Lincoln’s main objective in the speech is to show how the country can not continue to be half slave and half free but rather a nation where slavery is either extinct or fully accepted by all states and territories. In Lincoln’s words the nation “will become all one thing, or all the other” (Lincoln 1).The fluidity of Whitman’s “Song of Myself” connects with Lincoln’s ideology by showing through the speaker’s three personalities—Walt Whitman, Me Myself, and the Soul—that a metaphorical “house”(country) divided will fall. Whitman uses the three different personalities to show that all men are equal in a society and also that everyone has a distinct role that must be followed in order for the “house” to stand. The House Divided speech illuminates the notion of superiority necessitating a house’s standing in “Song of Myself” by showing that there must be a hierarchical system of roles in the country while the “Song of Myself” also penetrates the House Divided by showing the importance of diversity in a “house.”
Lincoln indirectly shows in the House Divided that superiority is necessary for the flourishing of a country by showing folly of a “sacred right of self-government” (2). Stephen A. Douglas, leading advocate for ‘Squatter Sovereignty,’ followed the doctrine of the Nebraska bill that s...

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...ers, ever regardful of others, Maternal as well as paternal, a child as well as a man, Stuffed with the stuff tat is coarse, and stuffed with the stuff that is fine, One of the great nation, the nation of many nations—the smallest the same and the largest the same, A southerner soon as a northerner, a panted nonchalant and hospitable. (2106.326-31)
Through the evident contradictions listed in this excerpt, Whiman displays the diversity of the country. He shows that a great nation is filled with a multitude of races and ethnicities, not just one. Whitman brings the southerners and the northerners together and briefly shows his prophetic gifts. The southerner soon becoming the northerner is Whitman saying that soon the south will take on the values of the north in abolishing slavery. He sees slavery ceasing thus leading to a “house” that stands because of no division.

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