Abraham Lincoln is a mythical figure in American culture and history because he is the president who saved the Union and abolished slavery. American admiration for him is so great that Americans carved him into the mountains and immortalized him in a Greek temple. Inscriptions of the “Gettysburg Address” and the “Second Inaugural Address” can be found in the Lincoln Memorial. For some, these speeches signify the rebirth of America as a unified political and moral country. Interestingly, these two speeches overshadow the fact that Lincoln's words were once divisive. In “House Divided,” Lincoln expands North-South divides by challenging “Popular Sovereignty,” an 1854 policy that allows residents of territories to decide whether to legalize slavery. According to Lincoln, “popular sovereignty” was only creating further divisions when the Union needed to reunify under the banner of slavery or abolition. Furthermore, Lincoln claims that there was a conspiracy to propagate slavery throughout the Union. Lincoln illustrates how several Democrats such as Stephen Douglas, President Franklin Pierce, Chief Justice Roger Taney, and President James Buchanan implemented policies that individually were not impressive, but which collectively spread slavery throughout the Union. Lincoln believed that slavery would have become legal throughout the Union if “the present political dynasty,” a pro-slavery construct, had not been “met and overthrown” by the Republicans (Lincoln 405). While I don't think Lincoln is calling for an armed overthrow, I do think his speech embodies the North's distrust of the South. In fact, Lincoln is so argumentative that as soon as he is elected the South secedes. However, Lincoln turns into a coherent policy... middle of paper...l the wealth accumulated by the serf's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited labor will be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the whip will be paid for by a another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so again it must be said "the judgments of the Lord are entirely true and just." I believe Lincoln always knew that slavery was incompatible with the Union. After emancipating the slaves, Lincoln had to begin reunifying a new slave-free Union, his ideal. He wants Americans to recognize a God who is against slavery and whose punishment for slavery's progression is just. To some he may seem very controversial when he says "... every drop of blood drawn with the whip shall be paid for by another drop of blood drawn with the sword" (Lincoln, Second Inaugural Address 462). It could serve to reinforce Lincoln's belief that the Civil War was just a desert.