“A house divided against itself cannot stand.” – Abraham Lincoln, June 16, 1858

152 years ago today, one of America’s greatest orators provided history with words that continue to serve as a reminder of the importance of national unity.

Upon accepting the nomination for the U.S. Senate at the Illinois Republican party convention in Springfield, Abraham Lincoln began what became known as the House Divided speech with a reference the New Testament’s Matthew 12:25:

If we could first know where we are, and whither we are tending, we could better judge what to do, and how to do it. We are now far into the fifty year since a policy was initiated with the avowed object and confident promise of putting and 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 crises 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. 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.

Less than three years later, Lincoln–now President of the United States–would confront his own prescience, as the country ignited into Civil War.