Great Speeches of Abraham Lincoln is a compilation of several speeches by Abraham Lincoln. Some of these speeches are famous; the Gettysburg Address and House Divided speech are famous Lincoln speeches of particular note. Some of them were delivered during the American Civil War; the First Inaugural Address and Last Public Address, among others. And some of them speak of freedom and Lincoln's views on American's original sin, slavery; the Peoria Speech and Cooper Union Address draw heavy influence from these areas.
In one of his most famous speeches, he said: "A house divided against itself cannot stand. I believe the government cannot endure permanently half slave and half free." He predicted that the country eventually would become "all one thing, or all the other." Again and again he insisted that the civil liberties of every U.S. citizen, white as well as Black, were at stake. The territories must be kept free, he further said, because "new free states" were "places for poor people to go and better their condition."