For, treating with all due respect the conviction of the Southern States as to the violation of their constitutional rights, no fair-minded man can deny that the central idea of the secession movement was the establishment of a great slave-holding empire around the Gulf of Mexico.
Blaine critiques the motivations behind the Southern states' secession, linking it to the desire for a slave-holding empire.
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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.
You can use force only to repel an assault on the public property and aid the Courts in the performance of their duty.
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.
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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