Born February 12, 1809, Lincoln began his political career in 1832 at the age of twenty-three. But it was his debates with Stephen Douglas twenty-six years later that brought him to national prominence and re-framed America’s arguments about slavery. Lincoln became the sixteenth president of the United States just three years later. He often quoted the Bible in his speeches. In his “House Divided” speech, during his campaign against Stephen Douglas, Lincoln quoted from Mark 3:25: “We are now far into the fifth year, with the avowed object . . . of putting an end to slavery agitation . . . that agitation has not only, not ceased, but has constantly augmented. . . . It will not cease, until a crisis shall have been reached, and passed. ‘A house divided against itself cannot stand.’”