He thereupon, on the 8th of August, 1846, moved a proviso to the two-million bill, declaring it to be "an express and fundamental condition to the acquisition of any territory from Mexico, that neither slavery nor involuntary servitude shall ever exist therein.
Blaine recounts the introduction of a significant amendment aimed at preventing slavery in newly acquired territories from Mexico.
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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…
If it be true that war cannot be declared, nor a system of general hostilities carried on by the Central Government against a State, then it seems to follow that an attempt to do so would be ipso facto an expulsion of such State from the…
All these provisions are made to protect the States, not to authorize an attack by one part of the country upon another; to preserve the peace, and not to plunge them into civil war.
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