The wrongs inflicted under the name of law, thus far recited, were still further aggravated in a majority of the rebellious States by the exaction of taxes from the colored man to an amount altogether disproportionate to their property.
Blaine discusses the unfair taxation imposed on African Americans in the Southern states after the Civil War.
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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.
Is any portion of the people bound to contribute their money or their blood to carry on a contest like that?
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.
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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