On the record
They came spontaneously, as if by inspiration, from the mass of the people, and were based on that instinctive sense of justice which the multitude rarely fails to exhibit.
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gutenberg.orgJames Blaine: “They came spontaneously, as if by inspiration, from the mass of the people, and were based on that instinctive sense of…”
Editor's note · Context
Blaine describes the grassroots support for justice that emerged during a tumultuous political period.
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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.
Is any portion of the people bound to contribute their money or their blood to carry on a contest like that?
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.
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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