Rebel generals, wearing the insignia of the rebel service, walk the streets of her cities, admired and courted; while the Union officers with their wounds yet unhealed, are ostracized in political, commercial and social life.
Blaine describes the social dynamics in a Southern state where former Union officers are marginalized while rebel generals are celebrated.
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The right of the General Government to preserve itself in its whole constitutional vigor by repelling a direct and positive aggression upon its property or its officers cannot be denied.
If this view of the subject be correct, as I think it is, then the Union must utterly perish at the moment when Congress shall arm one part of the people against another for any purpose beyond that of merely protecting the General…
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…
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.
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