""a living dog is better than a dead lion."..."See in text(Text of Lincoln's Speech)
The phrase “a living dog is better than a dead lion” is drawn from Ecclesiastes 9:4. It refers to the idea that even if a lion is grander than a dog in life, death makes all things equal. Combining allusion and metaphor, Lincoln suggests that even if Douglas were a mighty “lion” of a politician, his attachment to popular sovereignty and the Democratic party would make him an unlikely ally to the anti-slavery cause. The Republicans hoped that Douglas’s estrangement from Buchanan over the Lecompton Constitution might bring him to their side. However, Lincoln asserts that the “caged and toothless” Douglas has no intention nor means of aiding the Republicans since he claims to have no stake in their chief issue: halting the expansion of slavery.
"and we see these timbers joined together, and see they exactly make the frame of a house or a mill, all the tenons and mortises exactly fitting, and all the lengths and proportions of the different pieces exactly adapted to their respective places, and not a piece too many or too few, not omitting even scaffolding—or, if a single piece be lacking, we see the place in the frame exactly fitted and prepared yet to bring such piece in..."See in text(Text of Lincoln's Speech)
Lincoln extends the house metaphor that he introduced at the beginning of the speech. If the Union is “a house divided,” then Lincoln is certain that it will eventually become all slave or all free. He now accuses “Stephen and Franklin and Roger and James” of being in the process of constructing that new, pro-slavery nation. They have already made “the frame of a house” using the Kansas-Nebraska Act and Dred Scott decision. Now, Lincoln posits, they only need to bring in a few more pieces until the house is completed and slavery is legal across the United States.
"The working points of that machinery are:..."See in text(Text of Lincoln's Speech)
Lincoln extends his machinery metaphor and uses a numbered list to review the stipulations of the Dred Scott decision. By addressing the court holdings in an organized manner, Lincoln brings clarity to both the individual mechanisms of the decision and the overarching implications of it. Though his audience was likely familiar with the court decision, Lincoln’s decision to review the individual parts of it allows him to interpret the different components within his own argumentative framework. It also extends the industrial metaphor by approaching the parts of the decision as one might approach a technical manual. Each part of the Dred Scott decision serves a different purpose. Together, they work as a “machine” that is expressly designed to facilitate the spread of slavery.
"piece of machinery, so to speak..."See in text(Text of Lincoln's Speech)
Lincoln introduces an extended metaphor that he references throughout his speech. He compares the recent swathe of pro-slavery laws and legal decisions to parts of a machine. He then asks his audience to consider “what work the machinery is adapted to do,” setting up the primary claim of his speech: The Kansas-Nebraska Act and The Dred Scott decision are part of a larger conspiracy within the government aimed at expanding slavery across the entire United States.
"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. ..."See in text(Text of Lincoln's Speech)
Lincoln employs parallel structure and metaphor to emphasize the instability of the Union in its current state. Just as a “house divided against itself cannot stand,” neither can a nation torn between opposing ideologies continue to function. By comparing the United States to a house, Lincoln evokes the visual image of a structure on the verge of collapse. A house is capable of sheltering and protecting its inhabitants, but it is also capable of caving in on them. Lincoln uses repetition and parallelism to add severity to his words, emphasizing the image of a house falling over and offering a grim prediction for the future: If the United States cannot come together on the topic of slavery, then it will never be truly stable.
