How we cite our quotes: (Sentence)
Quote #1
I believe this government cannot endure, permanently, half slave and half free…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. (7, 10)
Lincoln nicely puts the thesis of his speech at the beginning, just so you know what you're getting yourself into. He's looking at the last decade or so of the United States and how tense (to say the least) the argument over the existence of slavery has become. The country has reached a boiling point where something needs to change…regardless of which way they end up going.
Quote #2
The new year of 1854 found slavery excluded from more than half the states by state constitutions and from most of the national territory by congressional prohibition. Four days later commenced the struggle which ended in repealing that congressional prohibition. This opened all the national territory to slavery and was the first point gained. (14-16)
Lincoln's emphasizing how quickly the situation can and did change in the volatile realm of antebellum America. Introducing popular sovereignty into the equation with the Kansas-Nebraska Act of January 1854 immediately started breaking down the restrictions of the Missouri Compromise, leaving the decision over whether or not to include slavery to each state rather than Congress. By the time the Dred Scott case was decided in 1857, Congress lost all remaining power to regulate slavery. This moment, then, was the beginning of the end of the old ways of preventing slavery's expansion.
Quote #3
Under the Dred Scott decision, 'squatter sovereignty' squatted out of existence, tumbled down like temporary scaffolding; like the mold at the foundry, served through one blast and fell back into loose sand; helped to carry an election and then was kicked to the winds. (43)
One of Lincoln's more poetic moments, this line appears as an alternate version of the house metaphor he uses periodically throughout the speech. He again uses recognizable physical imagery to give the audience a visualization of how popular sovereignty has been invalidated by the recent Supreme Court ruling. Why does he see the policy as having fallen apart the way he describes it here?