Lincoln was quick to see that white laborers might be readily prejudiced by superficial reasoning, and hence he adduced the broader argument which appealed at once to their humanity, to their sense of manly independence, and to their instinct of self-preservation against the mastery and the oppression of capital.
Blaine praises Lincoln for appealing to the broader humanity and independence of white laborers in his arguments.
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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.
The right of the General Government to preserve itself in its whole constitutional vigor by repelling a direct and positive aggression upon its property or its officers cannot be denied.
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…
If this view of the subject be correct, as I think it is, then the Union must utterly perish at the moment when Congress shall arm one part of the people against another for any purpose beyond that of merely protecting the General…
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