Nation divided

U.S. History
November 17, 2013
Lincoln Calhoun
Lincoln and Calhoun Up until 1860 politicians made efforts to maintain a balance between the Northern and Southern states. After Abraham Lincoln was elected in 1860 the Southern States believed that the balance of power had shifted away from them. While they wanted to preserve the Union, Lincoln was a known abolitionist and slavery seemed to be under attack. Calhoun and Lincoln both gave many speeches about the preservation of the United States, but each had their own agenda on how to do it. Calhoun stated that slavery was a “positive good” and that the Union and abolition cannot coexist. What he meant was that if the Union were to continue to live and prosper then slavery must remain a very prominent institution in the United States. Abolition would do nothing but bring down our nation and bring about anarchy. While Calhoun was wrong about America needing slavery, he was right about the chaos that would follow abolition. The United States would enter into a Civil War over the matter. Not only the war but, the United States just recently ended segregation. Calhoun was a racist who believed that the founding fathers did not include African Americans in the Declaration because white would always be supreme, but he did foresee the fall of the nation in its current state. Lincoln was a well-known abolitionist and knew that the country could not survive with slavery being a primary source of half the nation’s income. "A house divided against itself cannot stand." I believe this government cannot endure, permanently half slave and half free. I do not expect the Union to be dissolved -- I do not expect the house to fall -- but I do expect it will cease to be divided”. Lincoln delivered one of the greatest speeches of all time with his House Divided speech. He seemed like he was literally telling everyone the nation’s future. “It will become all one thing or all the other. Either the opponents of slavery, will arrest the further spread of it, and place it where the public mind shall rest in the belief that it is in the course of ultimate extinction; or its advocates will push it forward, till it shall become alike lawful in all the States, old as well as new -- North as well as South”. Lincoln knew that slavery would either be fully diminished or spread throughout the entire country. Lincoln tried to push for the abolition of slavery, but the Southern states would not stand for it. Violence began to erupt and war was beginning to seem inevitable. There were also many catalysts to the war. One of them being the slave revolt led by John Brown. Brown's attempt in 1859 to start a liberation movement among enslaved African Americans in Harpers Ferry, Virginia, electrified the nation. He was tried for treason against the Commonwealth of Virginia, the murder of five men and inciting a slave insurrection. He was found guilty on all counts and was hanged. Southerners alleged that his rebellion was the tip of the “abolitionist iceberg” and represented the wishes of the Republican Party to end slavery. Historians agree that the Harpers Ferry raid in 1859 escalated tensions that, a year later, led to secession and the American Civil War. “But I feel no consciousness of guilt. I have stated from the first what was my intention and what was not. I never had any design against the life of any person, nor any disposition to commit treason, or excite slaves to rebel, or make any general insurrection. I never encouraged any man to do so, but always discouraged any idea of that kind”. John Brown thought that God had given him a quest, and he was a very loyal servant of God. Brown believed he was doing the right thing, to many he was, but to many he wasn’t. The South viewed the revolt as an act of Northern aggression towards slavery and ultimately helped push towards a war. The war was inevitable, no matter what compromises legislature could stir up, the North and South were divided and the only thing that would fix that, was either the abolition or expansion of slavery.