Abraham Lincoln warned in 1858 that a “house divided against itself cannot stand.” His words, prophetic of the war that was to come three years later, continue to resonate today. That phrase — just one part of a much larger address — has become one of Lincoln’s most recognizable contributions to our American political vocabulary. But those words were not unique to the nineteenth-century president. the image of a “house divided,” or a family in conflict, was a timeless one that drew on a long tradition in literature and political thought. From the Bible to Greek tragedies to Shakespeare’s works to the political theories of John Locke, the family has offered a common language for understanding the complexities of human relationships. For Lincoln, the family provided a rhetorical shorthand, allowing him in just six words to convey what slavery might do to the relationship between Northern and Southern citizens.
Lincoln was not alone in describing a nation in family terms. Historians across the globe have uncovered numerous moments in which family language and metaphor figured centrally in the imagining of nations — particularly nations in conflict. We can see this in the French Revolution, Russian propaganda during World War I, and the Cold War, to name a few examples. the widespread use of the family image raises important questions about national identity — where it comes from, how it is defined, and how attachments to family and nation coexist and reinforce one another. in the United States we can trace the roots of the family metaphor at least to the Revolution, as colonists imagined themselves as children of a tyrannical British father.
The Civil War only amplified this association of nation and family with an outpouring of speeches and stories that joined Lincoln in comparing the nation to a divided house. Even today, in movies, Web sites, children’s literature, and John Jakes novels, we continue to see the warring nation as if it were a quarreling family — or a war of “brother against brother.” It has become a . . .