It was loaded down with its odious war record; it was divided on fiscal questions; it had fought a losing battle for twelve years on the defensive; and if it was to struggle with any hope it must discover a line on which it could boldly take the aggressive.
Blaine critiques the Democratic party's challenges and emphasizes the need for a new strategy to regain power.
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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.
But what if the feeling in any State against the United States should become so universal that the Federal officers themselves (including judges, district attorneys, and marshals) would be reached by the same influences, and resign their…
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…
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