But they are responsible for permitting a party whose rank and file did not outnumber their own to lead captive the public opinion of the South, and for permitting themselves to be pressed into a disavowal of their political principles, and to the adoption of the extreme views against which they had always warred.
Blaine argues that the Southern Whigs allowed a minority party to dominate public opinion and abandon their principles.
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He was a lawyer in full practice, a man of the highest integrity, without fear and without reproach.
But in the treatment of the colored man, now proposed, there was absolute heartlessness and rank injustice.
This ratio of influence went into the Electoral College, and gave to the white men of South Carolina, Mississippi and Louisiana double the power of that enjoyed by white men in New York, Illinois and California.
It is to the eminent credit of the Republican members of Congress that they stood in a crisis of this magnitude true to principle, firm against all the power and all the patronage of the Administration.
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