COMMUNICATION TO THE PEOPLE OF SANGAMON COUNTY
This announcement of political principles appeared in the Sangamon Journal, at that time the only newspaper published in Springfield. The present text, which differs in some details from that found in the various editions of Lincoln's works, follows the original, except in changing the spelling of Sangamo to Sangamon.
PERPETUATION OF OUR POLITICAL INSTITUTIONS.
On the close of the address resolutions were passed requesting the author to furnish a copy to the press, but for some unexplained reason it was not published until a year later. The present text is taken from the Sangamon Journal. Lincoln was one of the organizers of the Lyceum.
All through his life Lincoln showed a marked respect for the law, and the present warning against the consequences of lawlessness, so rhetorically sounded by the young orator of twenty-eight, was a perfectly sincere expression of a profound conviction.
"The gates of hell." Matthew xvi. 18. This quotation was repeated in a speech delivered at Indianapolis twenty-four years later, when civil war was threatening.
THE SPRINGFIELD SPEECH
During the summer of 1858 Lincoln delivered two important anti-slavery speeches at Springfield. The first and more important of these was made June 16,[*] at the close of the Republican State Convention, at which Lincoln was declared the party candidate for the United States Senate. The second, delivered a month later, is in part a defence and explanation of the earlier speech, which had been severely criticised by Lincoln's old opponent Judge Douglas. The first Springfield speech was very carefully prepared and the MS. was submitted to several of Lincoln's friends, all of whom objected to the opening statement as being impolitic and sure to lose the speaker the position for which he was a candidate. Lincoln refused to make any change, however, saying that he preferred to go down linked with truth, if that was necessary.
[*]By Herndon the date is given as June 17.
"A house divided against itself." Suggested by Matthew xii. 25, and Mark iii. 25. This quotation had already been used in 1843 in a Whig circular signed by Lincoln and two others, and in a letter written in 1863 Lincoln speaks of the government as a house divided against itself.