James Blaine: “Houston vindicated their right to speak and did battle for them with a warmth and zeal which specially commended him to…”

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.

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…

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.

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.