Though many patriotic men of conservative or timid nature advised a quiet withdrawal from Fort Sumter rather than an open conflict for its possession, there was an instinctive undertone in the masses of the people in the Northern States against a concession so humiliating.
Blaine reflects on the public sentiment in the North against conceding Fort Sumter without a fight.
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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.
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.
The States are colleagues of one another, and if some of them shall conquer the rest, and hold them as subjugated provinces, it would totally destroy the whole theory upon which they are now connected.
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.
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