On the record
The task of Congress might well strike some thoughtful legislators as that of making bricks without straw.
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gutenberg.orgJames Blaine: “The task of Congress might well strike some thoughtful legislators as that of making bricks without straw.”
Editor's note · Context
Blaine uses a metaphor to describe the challenges Congress faced in addressing the financial needs of the nation during the Civil War.
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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.
Is any portion of the people bound to contribute their money or their blood to carry on a contest like that?
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…
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.
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