Many Northern Democrats had indeed given the assurance that if any attempt at coercion should be made by the Republican National Administration, they would themselves meet it with force, and that, if war should come, it would be in the free States and not in the slave States.
Blaine notes the threats from Northern Democrats to resist Republican policies during the Reconstruction era.
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The Northern people shrank from the responsibility of transferring the government of States to the control of men who had already shown themselves capable of desperate deeds.
Their pirates burned your unarmed commerce upon every sea.
The wisdom of maintaining that institution was abundantly vindicated by the results of the war.
The deep-seated prejudice against color is assiduously cultivated by the public journals and leads to acts of cruelty, oppression, and murder, which the local authorities are at no pains to prevent or punish.
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