On the record
The government of a Republic is left to all the chances of anarchy so long as there is no mode established by law for determining the election of its Chief Executive officer.
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gutenberg.orgJames Blaine: “The government of a Republic is left to all the chances of anarchy so long as there is no mode established by law for…”
Editor's note · Context
Blaine warns that without a legal method for determining presidential elections, a republic risks descending into anarchy.
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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…
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.
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.
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