I Was There, Guys

William Herndon was Lincoln's law partner in Illinois before the senatorial election. He's also known for being Lincoln's biographer, and helping shape our historical image of the man. (The shape was, um, tall.)

An excerpt of his two-volume biography talks about the moment when he first read and reacted to the "House Divided" speech.

Although we have to take it with a little grain of salt—since this is written twenty years after the Lincoln's death by a close friend—it does give some interesting insight into how the speech came together.

Herndon got a sneak preview, as it turns out. He returned to Illinois after a trip to find Lincoln, unsurprisingly, the Republican nominee for the U.S. Senate. Herndon describes Lincoln's writing process for the "House Divided" speech:

This speech he wrote on stray envelopes and scraps of paper, as ideas suggested themselves, putting them into that miscellaneous and convenient receptacle, his hat. As the convention drew near he copied the whole on connected sheets, carefully revising every line and sentence, and fastened them together, for reference during the delivery of the speech, and for publication. The former precaution, however, was unnecessary, for he had studied and read over what he had written so long and carefully that he was able to deliver it without the least hesitation or difficulty. (Source)

It's a pretty nice image: Lincoln storing pieces of one of his most famous speeches in his almost equally famous top hat.

The Man In Action

Lincoln does a trial run of the speech on Herndon, after which Herndon describes this exchange:

I remember what I said after hearing the first paragraph, wherein occurs the celebrated figure of the house divided against itself: 'It is true, but is it wise or politic to say so?' He responded: 'That expression is a truth of all human experience… The proposition also is true, and has been for six thousand years. I want to use some universally known figure expressed in simple language as universally well-known, that may strike home to the minds of men in order to raise them up to the peril of the times. (Source)

Herndon paints Lincoln throughout as a noble fighter for the anti-slavery cause, who was finally willing to speak his mind by 1858. Lincoln's response to Herndon's rather practical question rings pretty true when you read the speech. The "house divided" metaphor is straight-forward, understandable, and yet evocative—perfect for an audience at a political event. He wanted to put the idea in terms that would be intelligible but also motivational.

Herndon continues on, discussing how Lincoln had used the idea before in 1856, but told to shelve it because it was at that point too divisive. He continues to make Lincoln the prophetic martyr by claiming that Lincoln gave a preview to a group of Republicans:

Some condemned and not one endorsed it. One man, more forcible than elegant, characterized it as a "d———d fool utterance," another said the doctrine was "ahead of its time" and still another contended that it would drive away a good many voters fresh from the Democratic ranks. (Source)

In a nutshell: most of the people Lincoln talked to were against the speech (except Herndon, of course), but he went ahead with it anyway, because, as the man himself said,

The time has come when these sentiments should be uttered; and if it is decreed that I should go down because of this speech, then let me go down linked to the truth—let me die in the advocacy of what is just and right. (Source)

Herndon writes a portrait of his friend as one battling against the elements, even within his own party, to be the beacon of truth and light when no one else dared. Even after the speech Lincoln apparently met with a lot of criticism from Republicans.

That may very well be true…but given how the next few years of Lincoln's political career went, he can't have been that poorly received.

This account, although probably not as objective as biographies we've come to expect, does give some interesting insight into how the "House Divided" speech came to be, and what it was like to experience it as an Illinois Republican.