As the war to maintain Union and Liberty had cost a vast treasure and sacrificed countless lives, the States that had forced the bloody contest should agree by solemn amendment to the Constitution that the National debt and the pension to the soldier should be secured.
Blaine argues that states responsible for the Civil War should secure national debts and pensions through constitutional amendments.
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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.
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…
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…
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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