"House Divided" Speech- At the Illinois Statehouse for the Republican State Convention in June 1858 Lincoln was nominated as the candidate for Senator for Illinois. He would be running against Stephen A. Douglass (Democrat). He did not feel that the country could continue on as a divided nation. 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."
On Abraham Lincoln's Inaugural journey to Washington as President-elect (Elected but before start day), he stopped in Philadelphia at the site where the Declaration of Independence had been signed. He said, "I have never had a feeling politically that did not spring from the sentiments embodied in the Declaration of Independence."
Gettysburg Address on November 19, 1863- Lincoln remembered the fallen soldiers and dedicated that resting place. At the end of the address he said, "For us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us- that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they here gave the last full measure of devotion - that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain; that this nation shall have a new birth of freedom; and that this government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth."
In his "Second Inaugural Address" Lincoln said, "With malice toward none; with charity for all; with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in; to bind up the nation's wounds; to care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow, and his orphan -- to achieve and cherish a lasting peace among ourselves and with the world, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just, and a lasting peace, among ourselves, and with the world."