Many of the volunteers, as already indicated, rose to the command of divisions, a few to the command of corps, and in some marked instances to the command of separate armies and to the military direction of vast districts.
Blaine discusses how many volunteers rose to significant military commands during the war.
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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.
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.
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…
The States are colleagues of one another, and if some of them shall conquer the rest, and hold them as subjugated provinces, it would totally destroy the whole theory upon which they are now connected.
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