James Blaine: “Without the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments the Thirteenth would have proved of little value to the oppressed race…”

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.

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.

You can use force only to repel an assault on the public property and aid the Courts in the performance of their duty.

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.