The repulse of the National arms, with the consequent loss of prestige, necessarily emboldened the enemies of the Union, who, by playing upon the prejudices and fears of the slave-holders, might succeed in seducing them from their allegiance.
Blaine reflects on how the Union's defeat emboldened its enemies and threatened the loyalty of slave-holders.
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These divergent practices had been allowed to develop for seventy-seven years of the nation's life, when, admonished by the Stockton case of the latitudinary results to which loose methods might lead, Congress took jurisdiction of the…
In Congressional districts where the colored race constituted one-half of the total population (and in many instances the proportion was even larger), the vote of one white man offset the vote of two in a Northern district where suffrage…
The Northern people shrank from the responsibility of transferring the government of States to the control of men who had already shown themselves capable of desperate deeds.
It is to the eminent credit of the Republican members of Congress that they stood in a crisis of this magnitude true to principle, firm against all the power and all the patronage of the Administration.
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