On the record
We decline, in brief, to assent to any of the conditions or provisions of the proposed amendment to the Constitution, and we deny your right to amend it without our consent.
Source
gutenberg.orgJames Blaine: “We decline, in brief, to assent to any of the conditions or provisions of the proposed amendment to the Constitution…”
Editor's note · Context
Blaine rejects the proposed constitutional amendment, asserting the need for consent from the states involved.
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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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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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