Whether Texas was constitutionally or unconstitutionally annexed to the Union was no more to be decided by Massachusetts than the constitutionality of the prohibition of Slavery north of the Missouri line was to be decided by South Carolina.
Blaine asserts that the constitutionality of Texas's annexation is a matter not for Massachusetts to decide, just as the prohibition of slavery is not for South Carolina.
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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.
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.
You can use force only to repel an assault on the public property and aid the Courts in the performance of their duty.
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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