On the record
The Tenure- of-office Act was either right or wrong, expedient or inexpedient, Constitutional or unconstitutional, and it was easy to see that men could honestly differ as to its character in these respects.
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gutenberg.orgJames Blaine: “The Tenure- of-office Act was either right or wrong, expedient or inexpedient, Constitutional or unconstitutional, and…”
Editor's note · Context
Blaine reflects on the differing opinions regarding the Tenure-of-office Act's validity and implications.
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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.
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.
If it be true that war cannot be declared, nor a system of general hostilities carried on by the Central Government against a State, then it seems to follow that an attempt to do so would be ipso facto an expulsion of such State from the…
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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