It is the vainest delusion, the wildest of hopes, the most dangerous of all aspirations, to contemplate the reconstruction of civil government until the rebel despotisms enthroned in power in these ten States shall be broken up.
Blaine warns against the unrealistic hope of reconstructing civil government while rebel powers remain intact.
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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.
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…
The right of the General Government to preserve itself in its whole constitutional vigor by repelling a direct and positive aggression upon its property or its officers cannot be denied.
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