On the record
The President apparently failed to see that if the Nation could not be preserved by force, its legal capacity for existence was dependent upon the concurring and continuing will of all the individual States.
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gutenberg.orgJames Blaine: “The President apparently failed to see that if the Nation could not be preserved by force, its legal capacity for…”
Editor's note · Context
Blaine emphasizes the necessity of state cooperation for the nation's survival.
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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.
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 it be true that war cannot be declared, nor a system of general hostilities carried on by the Central Government against a State, then it seems to follow that an attempt to do so would be ipso facto an expulsion of such State from the…
Is any portion of the people bound to contribute their money or their blood to carry on a contest like that?
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