James Blaine: “It is not only New Orleans that I will cede, it is the whole colony without any reservation.”

But what if the feeling in any State against the United States should become so universal that the Federal officers themselves (including judges, district attorneys, and marshals) would be reached by the same influences, and resign their…

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.

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…

Without the exercise of those functions which belong exclusively to the civil service, the laws cannot be executed in any event, no matter what may be the physical strength which the Government has at its command.