The position carried with it an element of deception, because every intelligent man knew that it would be impossible to force negro suffrage on the Southern States by National authority, and leave the Northern States free to exclude it from their own domain.
Blaine highlights the hypocrisy of expecting Southern states to adopt policies that Northern states were unwilling to embrace.
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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…
But this is a totally different thing from an offensive war to punish the people for the political misdeeds of their State Government, or to enforce an acknowledgment that the Government of the United States is supreme.
You can use force only to repel an assault on the public property and aid the Courts in the performance of their duty.
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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