It would have opened anew the old struggle for equality between free States and slave States, and would in all probability have led the country to war within three years from its adoption,--war with Mexico for the border States of that Republic, war with Spain for the acquisition of Cuba.
Blaine discusses the potential consequences of a political decision regarding slavery and its implications for war.
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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…
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.
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…
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