Equal suffrage was still regarded however rather as an expedient of security against disloyalty than as a measure of National right, rather as an incident to the power of re-organizing rebellious communities than as a subject of National jurisdiction for all the States.
Blaine reflects on the perception of equal suffrage as a security measure rather than a fundamental right during the Reconstruction era.
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Is any portion of the people bound to contribute their money or their blood to carry on a contest like that?
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.
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…
But what if the feeling in any State against the United States should become so universal that the Federal officers themselves (including judges, district attorneys, and marshals) would be reached by the same influences, and resign their…
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