The Mysteries of History (June 16 Edition)
Lincoln's Warning of a House Divided
“Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” — Spanish-American philosopher George Santayana, 1905
“He is free to evade reality, he is free to unfocus his mind and stumble blindly down any road he pleases, but not free to avoid the abyss he refuses to see.” — Alice O’Connor, 1961
1858 — Abraham Lincoln Warns of the Consequences of a Divided Nation
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A little less than three years before the American Civil War began, on this date in 1858, future President Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865) warned that the Nation had become dangerously divided over the issue of slavery. Lincoln felt that the rift had grown so intense that the fate of the Union was in jeopardy.
To make his point, Lincoln used the illustration “a house divided against itself cannot stand.” This was a paraphrase of something that Jesus Christ had said, as recorded at Matthew 12:25, namely, “Every kingdom divided against itself comes to ruin, and every city or house divided against itself will not stand.” (New World Translation).
Lincoln opposed slavery, but was even more concerned with the preservation of the Union.
Mr. Lincoln became President in early 1861, shepherded the Nation through the Civil War (1861-1865), and was then murdered on April 15, 1865 shortly after being reelected. Slavery had been abolished (leading both to his reelection and his assassination), but it wasn’t long until Reconstruction failed and Jim Crow reared its ugly head.
Questions: What do you know about Abraham Lincoln? Do you think he would have done the same things if he had known it would lead to him being murdered? What was “Reconstruction” and how/why did it fail? What were the “Jim Crow” laws? Have you ever lived in the American South? Do you think prejudice will ever be eliminated? Is there any group of people who already have eradicated prejudice among themselves, even though they are a multinational, multiethnic, multicultural group?
