Blaine of Maine expressed his unwillingness to support any measure that would place the South under military government, if it did not at the same time prescribe the methods by which the people of a State could by their own action re-establish civil government.
Blaine articulates his reluctance to support military governance in the South without a clear path to civil government.
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Is any portion of the people bound to contribute their money or their blood to carry on a contest like that?
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.
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…
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