Perhaps it would be more truthful to say that the ambitions and conspiring politicians of the South had assumed the danger to this vast investment as the pretext for destroying the Government; and they had met with the fate so solemnly foretold in Sacred Writ,--they had drawn the sword and perished by the sword.
Blaine critiques Southern politicians for using the protection of their investments as a justification for rebellion.
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Is any portion of the people bound to contribute their money or their blood to carry on a contest like that?
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.
And if Congress shall break up the present Union by unconstitutionally putting strife and enmity and armed hostility between different sections of the country, instead of the domestic tranquility which the Constitution was meant to insure…
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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