The establishment and maintenance of a blockade is not accounted by naval officers as the most brilliant service to which in the line of their profession they may be deputed, but it was a service of inestimable value to the cause of the Union, and it was performed with a skill and thoroughness never surpassed.
Blaine emphasizes the importance of the naval blockade during the Civil War and its impact on the Union's success.
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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…
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.
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.
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.
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