But the sympathy which their condition under other circumstances might have evoked in the North, was stifled by the pertinent consideration that they had refused other forms of Reconstruction, and had wilfully drawn upon themselves all that was unwelcome in the one now about to be enforced.
Blaine discusses the Northern perspective on Southern resistance to Reconstruction efforts.
Share
More from James Blaine
You can use force only to repel an assault on the public property and aid the Courts in the performance of their duty.
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 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…
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.
Other voices in this conversation
