On the record
But as State officials can command us to no duty unknown to State laws, neither can a Federal officer claim any authority over us in matters not within his constitutional and legal control.
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gutenberg.orgJames Blaine: “But as State officials can command us to no duty unknown to State laws, neither can a Federal officer claim any…”
Editor's note · Context
Blaine asserts that state officials cannot impose duties beyond state laws, paralleling this with federal authority limitations.
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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…
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.
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.
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.
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