It was certainly of inestimable concern to the honor of the country that those who had shed their blood and those who had given their treasure for its defense, should have their claims upon the national justice placed beyond the whim, or the caprice, or the malice of an accidental majority in Congress.
Blaine stresses the importance of ensuring that those who fought for the country receive justice without being subject to the whims of Congress.
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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.
All these provisions are made to protect the States, not to authorize an attack by one part of the country upon another; to preserve the peace, and not to plunge them into civil war.
And if Congress shall break up the present Union by unconstitutionally putting strife and enmity and armed hostility between different sections of the country, instead of the domestic tranquility which the Constitution was meant to insure…
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.
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