I declare it as my solemn conviction that no government can long continue to be free when one-third of its people and one-third of the States are controlled by military power.
James Blaine: “I declare it as my solemn conviction that no government can long continue to be free when one-third of its people and…”
Editor's note · Context
Blaine asserts that a government cannot remain free if a significant portion of its population is under military control.
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More from James Blaine
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…
Is any portion of the people bound to contribute their money or their blood to carry on a contest like that?
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 this view of the subject be correct, as I think it is, then the Union must utterly perish at the moment when Congress shall arm one part of the people against another for any purpose beyond that of merely protecting the General…





