Use the excerpt and your knowledge of social studies to answer the questions.

“We are now far into the fifth year, since a policy was initiated, with the avowed object, and confident promise, of putting an end to slavery agitation. Under the operation of that policy, that agitation has not only, not ceased, but has constantly augmented. In my opinion, it will not cease, until a crisis shall have been reached, and passed. ‘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.”
—Abraham Lincoln, 1858

To what did Abraham Lincoln refer when he said, “A house divided against itself cannot stand”?

The Union would be dissolved over the issue of slavery.

Slavery helped unite states in the Union.

Compromise would continue to keep the issue of slavery at bay.

The Union could not continue with both free states and slave states.

Abraham Lincoln addressed "The House Divided Speech" in 1858. He emphasized that it was impossible for the North (also called the Union/the USA) to choose their state's own status. According to Lincoln, there will come a time that the Union will either become a fully-free state or a fully-slave state. It was impossible for it to continuously become divided in the long-run. His speech debated the goal of Stephen A. Douglas who supported "popular sovereignty" in which the settlers are given the option to choose between a free state or a slave state.