After the adoption of the Fifteenth Amendment, if a State should exclude the negro from suffrage, the next step would be for the Supreme Court to declare that the act was unconstitutional, and therefore null and void.
Blaine predicts the judicial response to states excluding African Americans from suffrage after the Fifteenth Amendment's adoption.
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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…
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.
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.
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