They clearly saw, as their co-operating friends in the North had seen long before, that a compact vote of all the Southern States could be used as the sure foundation of a formidable, and, as they hoped, irresistible political power.
Blaine notes the strategic political calculations of Southern states in forming a united front against federal authority.
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Their success as civil magistrates, as legislators, as executives was not less marked and meritorious than their illustrious service in war.
As slavery had been the chief inciting cause of disunion, slavery should die.
He had placed himself in a position from which he could not with grace retreat, and to go forward in which was still further to blight his hopes of promotion in his party.
The two schools in short marked the dividing line between the radical and the conservative.
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