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The amplitude of his knowledge, his industry, his unflagging zeal, his biting sarcasm, his power to sting and destroy without himself showing passion, made a combination of qualities as rare as it was formidable.
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gutenberg.orgJames Blaine: “The amplitude of his knowledge, his industry, his unflagging zeal, his biting sarcasm, his power to sting and destroy…”
Editor's note · Context
Blaine characterizes a person's unique combination of qualities, suggesting they were both formidable and rare in their capabilities.
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More from James Blaine
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.
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.
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…
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.
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