Abraham Lincoln delivered the famous The House Divided Speech on June 16, 1858. In that speech he said:
"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 lawful in all the States, old as well as new — North as well as South."Captain Terence O'Neill said in 'Ulster at Cross Roads', December 9 1968:
"I could not see how an Ulster divided against itself could hope to stand."This epigram did not spring from nowhere or was it simply clutched from the air. This was the product of the collective readings and experience of Lincoln.
