history, too, that could be read and understood alike by all, the wise and the ignorant, the learned and the unlearned.—­But those histories are gone.  They can be read no more forever.  They were a fortress of strength; but what invading foeman could never do, the silent artillery of time has done—­the levelling of its walls.  They are gone.  They were a forest of giant oaks; but the all-restless hurricane has swept over them, and left only here and there a lonely trunk, despoiled of its verdure, shorn of its foliage, unshading and unshaded, to murmur in a few more gentle breezes, and to combat with its mutilated limbs a few more ruder storms, then to sink and be no more.

They were pillars of the temple of liberty; and now that they have crumbled away that temple must fall unless we, their descendants, supply their places with other pillars, hewn from the solid quarry of sober reason.  Passion has helped us, but can do so no more.  It will in future be our enemy.  Reason—­cold, calculating, unimpassioned reason—­must furnish all the materials for our future support and defence.  Let those materials be moulded into general intelligence, sound morality, and, in particular, a reverence for the Constitution and laws; and that we improved to the last, that we remained free to the last, that we revered his name to the last, that during his long sleep we permitted no hostile foot to pass over or desecrate his resting-place, shall be that which to learn the last trump shall awaken our WASHINGTON.

Upon these let the proud fabric of freedom rest, as the rock of its basis, and, as truly as has been said of the only greater institution, “the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.”

SPEECH, AT SPRINGFIELD, ILLINOIS, JUNE 16, 1858

Mr. President, and Gentlemen of the Convention:  If we could first know where we are, and whither we are tending, we could better judge what to do, and how to do it.  We are now far into the fifth year since a policy was initiated with the avowed object and confident promise of putting an end to slavery agitation.  Under the operation of that policy, that agitation has not only not ceased, but has constantly augmented.  In my opinion, it will not cease, until a crisis shall have been reached and passed.  “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.  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.