The South had its choice, and it deliberately and after fair warning decided to reject the magnanimous offer of the North and to insist upon an advantage in representation against which a common sense of justice revolted.
Blaine critiques the South's decision to reject Northern offers, which he believes was unjust and counterproductive.
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In turn, the course of the National Administration would certainly be influenced, and its fate in large degree determined, by the conduct of the Southern men, in whom the President was placing unbounded trust.
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.
Their pirates burned your unarmed commerce upon every sea.
The deep-seated prejudice against color is assiduously cultivated by the public journals and leads to acts of cruelty, oppression, and murder, which the local authorities are at no pains to prevent or punish.
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