James Blaine: “We are therefore free in every sense to submit to the guidance alone of reason and duty.”

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.

Is any portion of the people bound to contribute their money or their blood to carry on a contest like that?

But what if the feeling in any State against the United States should become so universal that the Federal officers themselves (including judges, district attorneys, and marshals) would be reached by the same influences, and resign their…

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.