The measures adopted at the close of the Thirty-eighth Congress, after four years of desperate struggle and on the very eve on National victory, showed as great readiness to make sacrifices, as little disposition to count the cost of saving the Union, as had marked previous legislation.
Blaine reflects on the sacrifices made by Congress during the critical period leading to the end of the Civil War.
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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.
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.
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.
But what if the feeling in any State against the United States should become so universal that the Federal officers themselves (including judges, district attorneys, and marshals) would be reached by the same influences, and resign their…
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