It was his sense of personal fidelity to the Southern men who had been faithful to him, that blinded him to the higher obligation of fidelity to country, and to the higher appreciation of self-interest which is inseparably bound up with duty.
Blaine critiques a politician's misplaced loyalty to Southern allies over national duty.
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An attempt to guarantee and protect a revived State government constructed in whole or in preponderating part from the very element against whose hostility and violence it is to be protected is simply absurd.
It is to the eminent credit of the Republican members of Congress that they stood in a crisis of this magnitude true to principle, firm against all the power and all the patronage of the Administration.
Their success as civil magistrates, as legislators, as executives was not less marked and meritorious than their illustrious service in war.
He had placed himself in a position from which he could not with grace retreat, and to go forward in which was still further to blight his hopes of promotion in his party.
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