James Blaine: “The essential and inestimable value of the Fourteenth Amendment still remains in the three other sections, and…”

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.

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.

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

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.