Lincoln's House Divided Speech

The House Divided Speech was an address given by Abraham Lincoln (who would later become President of the United States) on June 16, 1858, at what was then the Illinois State Capitol in Springfield, upon accepting the Illinois Republican Party's nomination as that state's United States senator. The speech became the launching point for his unsuccessful campaign for the Senate seat held by Stephen A. Douglas; this campaign would climax with the Lincoln-Douglas debates of 1858.

Mr. Lincoln's remarks in Springfield created an image of the danger of slavery-based disunion, and it rallied Republicans across the North. Along with the Gettysburg Address and his second inaugural address, this became one of the best-known speeches of his career.

The best-known passage of the speech is:

Lincoln's goals with this speech were, firstly, to differentiate himself from Douglas, the incumbent; and secondly, to publicly voice a prophecy for the future. Douglas had long advocated popular sovereignty, under which the settlers in each new territory decided their own status as a slave or free state; he had repeatedly asserted that the proper application of popular sovereignty would end slavery-induced conflict, and would allow northern and southern states to resume their peaceful coexistence. Lincoln, however, responded that the Dred Scott decision had closed the door on Douglas's preferred option and left the Union with only two remaining outcomes: the United States would inevitably become either all slave, or all free. Now that the North and the South had come to hold distinct opinions in the question of slavery, and now that this issue had come to permeate every other political question, the time would soon come when the Union would no longer be able to function.

House Divided

"House Divided" is the twenty-second episode of the fifth season of House. It aired on April 27, 2009.

Plot

House lies in his bed, unable to sleep and hallucinating about Amber. His pager goes off, and he heads to the hospital where his team is reviewing Seth Miller's case. Seth is a student who became deaf from meningitis at age four. During a high school wrestling match, Seth "hears" an explosion before collapsing (exploding head syndrome). House hallucinates about Amber in his office, where she comments about "the limp leading the blind". Amber, representing House's subconscious, tells him hints that he would not otherwise notice to help him "put things together". Amber tells House the patient's C-reactive protein was slightly elevated and that the stress of the seizure lab triggered the blindness. Amber then advises House to play music - Public Enemy's "Fight the Power" - for Seth, which helps him uncover a new symptom, neuropathy.

House tosses out his bottle of sleeping pills because he needs Amber's help. The team quizzes House about how he diagnosed the neuropathy. House claims he assumed that Seth's losing match record meant his balance was off due to diminished sensation. House wonders if the deafness was caused by NF2 cancer so he orders a brain MRI. Taub speaks to Seth's mother about the NF2 cancer and the possibility of him regaining his hearing. Seth, however, insists on remaining deaf.