James Blaine: “The acquisition of Louisiana, the purchase of Florida, the Mexican war, were all great national movements which resulted…”

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.

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.

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.

The States are colleagues of one another, and if some of them shall conquer the rest, and hold them as subjugated provinces, it would totally destroy the whole theory upon which they are now connected.