The question therefore was not whether foreign powers had a right to recognize, but whether the time and method of such recognition were not distinctly hostile,-- whether they were not the efficient and coldly calculated means to strengthen the hands of the Rebellion.
Blaine raises concerns about the timing and intent behind foreign recognition of the Confederacy.
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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.
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…
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.
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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