James Blaine: “Dangerous as it was to the new administration to confront the issue, it would have been still more dangerous to attempt…”

You can use force only to repel an assault on the public property and aid the Courts in the performance of their duty.

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?

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.