It is difficult to compute the loss and the suffering endured by the South from the folly of rejecting a Constitutional Amendment, which they could have had with all its benefits, and which they were compelled afterwards to accept with all its burdens.
Blaine reflects on the consequences faced by the South for rejecting the Fourteenth Amendment.
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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…
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.
And if Congress shall break up the present Union by unconstitutionally putting strife and enmity and armed hostility between different sections of the country, instead of the domestic tranquility which the Constitution was meant to insure…
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.
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