James Blaine: “Davis betrayed by this motion his apprehension that freedom to the negro would be followed by the enjoyment of civil…”

You can use force only to repel an assault on the public property and aid the Courts in the performance of their duty.

And if Congress shall break up the present Union by unconstitutionally putting strife and enmity and armed hostility between different sections of the country, instead of the domestic tranquility which the Constitution was meant to insure…

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.

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.