On the record
The Rebels might fight without money, for they had no national credit to protect; but to the Union, bankruptcy meant final and hopeless ruin.
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gutenberg.orgJames Blaine: “The Rebels might fight without money, for they had no national credit to protect; but to the Union, bankruptcy meant…”
Editor's note · Context
Blaine contrasts the financial situations of the Rebels and the Union, emphasizing the stakes of national credit.
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More from James Blaine
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…
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.
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.
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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