On the record
For the first and only time in our political history, an administration conducting a war victorious at every step, steadily lost ground in the country.
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gutenberg.orgJames Blaine: “For the first and only time in our political history, an administration conducting a war victorious at every step…”
Editor's note · Context
Blaine comments on the paradox of a victorious administration losing public support during a war, a unique situation in American politics.
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More from James Blaine
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…
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.
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…
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.
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