James Blaine: “While I remain in my present position I shall not attempt to retract or modify the Emancipation Proclamation.”

You can use force only to repel an assault on the public property and aid the Courts in the performance of their duty.

Under such circumstances, to send a military force into any State, with orders to act against the people, would be simply making war upon them.

If this view of the subject be correct, as I think it is, then the Union must utterly perish at the moment when Congress shall arm one part of the people against another for any purpose beyond that of merely protecting the General…

But this is a totally different thing from an offensive war to punish the people for the political misdeeds of their State Government, or to enforce an acknowledgment that the Government of the United States is supreme.