In the foregoing pages reference has been made repeatedly to Lincoln's poise. In the chapter just concluded this poise has been studied for its beauty. This attitude will repay still further scrutiny. For looked at again, and from another point of view, it reveals itself as a reservoir of energy. Seen thus, Lincoln's notable poise becomes a mighty store of potential, and indeed of active force. It may be described as a mingling of energy and repose, of resourcefulness and rest, showing and playing through all his influence among other men, and largely explaining its potency. Of just this personal habitude, through all the years of Lincoln's participation in our national affairs, there was strenuous need and requisition. His public course ran through an era in our national career of unprecedented internal turbulence. The house was divided against itself. The cause of the dissension was a diametrical opposition and an irreconcilable contention of views touching a matter so radical as the basis of our Declaration of Independence, and the purport of our fundamental national document, the Constitution. To the men on either side of this contention it seemed as though their antagonists were bent upon uprooting and removing the very hills. This obstinate and inveterate disagreement revolved about the single, simple, fateful question of the right and wrong of holding men in bonds. For a full generation before Lincoln entered the lists the conflict had been bitterly intense, refusing to be composed or assuaged. Near the beginning of the last decade of Lincoln's life he put on his armor and chose his side. In 1858, while competing with Douglas for a seat in the U. S. Senate, Lincoln made a declaration that, for its bearing upon his own career and its influence in national affairs, has become historic; while for its testimony to the topic of this chapter it has the very first significance. The core of that declaration was a quotation from words of Christ, when refuting the charge that he was in league with Beelzebub:--"A house divided against itself cannot stand." This quotation was cited by Lincoln to edge his affirmation that the national agitation concerning slavery, then in full course, and continually augmenting, would not cease until a crisis should be reached and passed. This was his firm assurance. A national crisis was at hand. But to this assurance, that the government could not endure permanently half slave and half free, he attested another confidence equally assured:--"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 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."