James Blaine: “No contest for the Presidency, either before or since, has been conducted with such intense energy and such deep…”

Of course the Rebellion will never be suppressed in Louisiana if the professed Union men there will neither help to do it nor permit the Government to do it without their help. . . .

With whatever strength or prestige the President left Washington, he certainly returned to the Capital personally discredited and politically ruined.

Observing men in the loyal States regarded such a policy not only as weak and maudlin, but as utterly insufficient and assuredly dangerous to the future safety of the Government.

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.