When Abraham Lincoln spoke the prophetic words “a house divided against itself cannot stand” — in a speech before the Illinois Republican state convention in 1858 — he was a relatively unknown politician. He saw the obvious: North and South were hopelessly divided over the issue of slavery — or more fundamentally, states’ rights — and a breakup was all but unavoidable. This came to pass in just a few years’ time in the form of the Civil War.
