It is painfully obvious what the statist, anti-Christian, anti-freedom leftists have decided is their ruthless intent Abraham Lincoln, while campaigning for the U.S. Senate from Illinois, made a now-famous speech on June 16, 1858 in which, citing the irreconcilable North-South division of America on the eve of the civil war, said, a nation divided against itself cannot stand ; The Dred Scott decision by the U.S.