His great aim and purpose has been to subvert law, usurp authority, insult and outrage Congress, reconstruct the rebel States in the interest of treason, and insult the memories and resting-places of our heroic dead.
Blaine accuses President Johnson of undermining the law and acting against the interests of Congress and the nation.
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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.
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…
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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