The Southern men believed and boasted that they would subject to general reproach and expose to open shame that whole class of intermeddlers and fanatics (as they termed opponents of slavery) who had destroyed so many lives and wasted so much treasure in attempting the impossible and, even if possible, the undesirable.
Blaine reflects on the Southern leaders' disdain for those who opposed slavery and their attempts to discredit them.
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In my judgment our sole authority for the acts which we have done during the last four years was the authority communicated to Congress by the Constitution to suppress insurrection.
The two schools in short marked the dividing line between the radical and the conservative.
Observing men in the loyal States regarded such a policy not only as weak and maudlin, but as utterly insufficient and assuredly dangerous to the future safety of the Government.
An attempt to guarantee and protect a revived State government constructed in whole or in preponderating part from the very element against whose hostility and violence it is to be protected is simply absurd.
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