On the record
The time for executive acts of a more pronounced character was directly after the Presidential election, when the first symptoms of resistance to national authority were visible in the South.
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gutenberg.orgJames Blaine: “The time for executive acts of a more pronounced character was directly after the Presidential election, when the first…”
Editor's note · Context
Blaine reflects on the critical timing for decisive action during the early stages of the Civil War.
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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…
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?
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.
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