On the record
Their leaders had taught them that the one necessarily involved the other, and that a man who was in favor of the Wilmot Proviso was as bitter an enemy to the South as one who incited a servile insurrection.
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gutenberg.orgJames Blaine: “Their leaders had taught them that the one necessarily involved the other, and that a man who was in favor of the Wilmot…”
Editor's note · Context
Blaine explains how Southern leaders conflated various political positions with threats to their way of life.
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Is any portion of the people bound to contribute their money or their blood to carry on a contest like that?
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…
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.
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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