The winter preceding the outbreak of the rebellion had been so assiduously devoted by Congress to efforts of compromise and conciliation, that it was difficult to turn the public mind promptly to the other side, and to induce the people to accept the logical consequences of the war.
Blaine notes the challenges Congress faced in shifting public opinion during the pre-war period.
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It was the insane folly of the South, in drawing the sword against the life of the Nation, that led irresistibly to the abolition of slavery.
The need of action and of energy so pressed upon him that he found no time to utter lamentation, none to indulge even in the most sacred personal grief.
This ratio of influence went into the Electoral College, and gave to the white men of South Carolina, Mississippi and Louisiana double the power of that enjoyed by white men in New York, Illinois and California.
These divergent practices had been allowed to develop for seventy-seven years of the nation's life, when, admonished by the Stockton case of the latitudinary results to which loose methods might lead, Congress took jurisdiction of the…
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