If by fortune, as was his hope, he should receive a sufficient number of votes in the North to make a majority, then, with the support of the Army which he had corrupted, he had determined to be inaugurated President of the United States at the hazard of civil war.
Blaine warns of the potential for civil war if a corrupt leader were to seize the presidency.
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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.
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.
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.
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.
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