A Short Analytical Paper of Abraham Lincoln’s “a House Divided”

The House Divided Speech was addressed by Abraham Lincoln on June 1958. He delivered the speech upon his acceptance of Illinois Republican Party’s nomination as the senator of the state. Thus the speech became a very important launching campaign for his success in politics thus giving him a national limelight that saw him in the elections to the presidency in 1860.The speech primarily addressed on the issue of slavery in America. Abraham Lincoln delivered his speech aimed at establishing his strong beliefs towards the acts of slavery.

The speech was also meant to point out a differentiating factor of beliefs from Stephen Douglas and the rest of the top governmental officials who seemed to practice corruption in their transactions.

According to Abraham Lincoln, “A House divided against itself cannot stand”. This was the major crucial theme of Abraham Lincoln’s speech. From this important statement,Licoln meant that the American nation could not in whatever terms or state face a positive survival phase when it was composed of a state of half-slavery and half-free.

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He meant that only one of those two states could only exist. Thus his bold statement was that he expected that the division that existed had to cease so as to embrace success and good governance.

Lincoln’s speech helped rouse to the people of America the recognition of the extent to which slavery had gone. Lincoln’s speech is still relevant in this 21st century in that even today, each nation should embrace unity in all its undertakings whether political, social and economic.

He believed that the ideals of a nation with freedom for all could not have a chance of coexistence whether socially, morally or in legal terms under one nation. Thus slavery should either be accepted among all people or be universally denied.

A universal truth is clearly bears a clear significance from Lincoln’s statement to the extent that such a statement even pervades a lot of importance to the modern society and even the governments in power today.
Such relevance can be clearly seen in the experiences in Sudan. Continued irreconcilable differences in culture and religion against the people of Sudan saw Southern Sudan seceding to become the republic of South Sudan. Such success for secession bears credit from the prophetic work of Abraham Lincoln. A division had always existed between the people from Northern Sudan who were associated with Muslim religion and the people from the Southern Sudan who were associated with Christianity. This scenario bred a situation of ethnic and cultural differences between the two states to the extent where secession could be avoided.

Even today, the American nation is still faced with challenging political divisions and differences especially between the parties of the Republicans and the Democrats. The unwillingness of the two parties to arise to compromised solutions has always been evident in most of the major recent crises facing the nation. Clear evidence is the recent crisis on the debt ceiling where the Republicans were on the favor of maintaining cuts on spending as opposed to the Democrats who were advocating for an increase in taxes so as to increase revenue collection in the country. Further differences saw a compromised situation of debt ceiling being arrived at as the solution. This led to the country facing an economic disaster as a result of the oppositions from the two strong political parties.

In the recent world, the institution of marriage can be compared to the speech of Abraham Lincoln. Marriage is a union of two people who are bound to each other by law. Division is prone to occur in a marriage situation in case of a divorce. For the married partners to embrace endured togetherness and unity in their marriage, they must appreciate common interests of concerns in their practices. In case one of the partners dissent from the unity and togetherness set up, the marriage is susceptible to division brought about by breaking of the legal bonds that hold the marriage partnership in unison. Continued lack of an amicable compromised solution between the two conflicting partners will thus lead to separation. Continued separation will see the two partners seek a divorce in a court of law and the marriage will fail completely. Most marriages nowadays are failing as a result of continued disagreements of interests between the married couple.
As per words of Lincoln that a divide house cannot stand, thus the divided marriage partnership cannot even endure survival thus it breaks up.

Even today, divisions in groups have been as a result of continued differences among the uniting groups. Humans have a tendency to incline towards the protection of their interest’s aid favors of their perceived groups. Such favourism makes them advocate fully for their interests posing a challenging opposing side to the interests of their unperceived groups. Many nations today are faced with such opposing groups having differing interests and ideals. People advocating for similar ideals tend to create strong ties of loyalty and even alliances creating a boundary to the opposing group or alliance. The existence of the two opposing groups as a whole sees each group maintain conflicting interests. Continued disagreement leads to one group conquer the other resulting to a failing side and a winning side. Ultimately such results create division in the nations.

Thus, Abraham Lincoln’s works from the speech “A House Divided” bears a lot of significance and relevance in our modern world.