On the record
The American people must be taught--if they do not already feel--that treason is a crime and must be punished.
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gutenberg.orgJames Blaine: “The American people must be taught--if they do not already feel--that treason is a crime and must be punished.”
Editor's note · Context
Blaine insists on the necessity of teaching the public that treason is a serious crime deserving punishment.
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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.
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.
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.
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