If through the necessary employment of all our means of national defense such a partial war shall become a general one between the two nations, the President thinks that the responsibility for that painful result will not fall upon the United States.
Blaine asserts that the United States would not bear the blame if a partial war escalated into a general conflict.
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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.
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.
But what if the feeling in any State against the United States should become so universal that the Federal officers themselves (including judges, district attorneys, and marshals) would be reached by the same influences, and resign their…
Without the exercise of those functions which belong exclusively to the civil service, the laws cannot be executed in any event, no matter what may be the physical strength which the Government has at its command.
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