On the record
Why not, when you send out this military police through the lately rebellious States, send with it that impressive declaration?
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gutenberg.orgJames Blaine: “Why not, when you send out this military police through the lately rebellious States, send with it that impressive…”
Editor's note · Context
Blaine suggests that a strong declaration should accompany military presence in the Southern states.
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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.
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…
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.
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.
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