With the prejudices which inspired the South,--prejudices made still more intense by the victory of the Union,--it was altogether certain that the Southern Conventions would not extend the elective franchise or civil right of any kind to the colored men of any class.
Blaine discusses the entrenched prejudices in the South that would hinder civil rights for African Americans.
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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.
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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