James Blaine

The advocates of a uniform and stable system of banking to cure the manifold evils then prevailing, admitted that the prerogative of the States could not be questioned, but urged that the exercise of it had invariably increased and often…

It had only increased the dangers of inflation by the stimulus it imparted and the protection it afforded to the circulation of State bank notes.

We stir the ambition of the living by rearing costly monuments to the heroic dead.

We stimulate the ardor of patriotism by the mere display of a flag which has no material force, but which is emblematic of all material force, and typifies the glory of the Nation.

But Virginia's embarrassment is of wide-spread concern, and injuriously affects the public credit of other States.

But, unfortunately,--or it may be fortunately,--the detriment to her public credit can be stated with substantial precision, and can be traced directly to her despoilment.

True-hearted Americans rejoice in the prosperity of these States which adorn the southern border of the Republic; but they cannot help seeing, and seeing with regret, how differently the ancient Commonwealth of Virginia has fared at the…

Florida has likewise enjoyed general prosperity, and secured rapid development from the resources of land which the National Government had generously given her before the war and of which she was not deprived for her acts of rebellion.

Since the war Texas has traveled the highway to wealth and power, founded on the ownership of her public lands, of which the National Government could have deprived her with as little difficulty as was found in dividing Virginia.

But for the urgency of the seven original Confederate States, in which Texas and Florida were numbered, Virginia Loyalists would have been able to hold their State firm in her National allegiance.

It was the aggressive disunionism of the two latter States which aided powerfully in dragging Virginia into rebellion.

One of her earliest acts of patriotism as an independent State was the cession to the General Government of her superb domain on the north side of the Ohio River, from the sale of which more than one hundred millions of dollars have been…

But the wounds inflicted on the mother State by her separation will never be healed until Virginia is relieved from the odium of having been specially selected from the eleven seceding States for the punishment that struck at once against…

West Virginia is to be congratulated, and her creditable career and untiring enterprise since she assumed the responsibilities of self-government show how well she deserved the boon.

West Virginia indeed got only what was equitably due, and what she was entitled to claim by the natural right of self-government.

They would have been brushed aside and disregarded with that cool indifference by which all great legislative bodies prove how easy it is to endure the misery of other people.

The organic law would not have been strained, legal fictions would not have been invented, contradictory theories would not have been indulged, if a great national interest had not demanded the creation of West Virginia.

Our government in addition to the money consideration of fifteen millions of dollars which we paid for territory, agreed to exonerate Mexico from all demands of our citizens, and to pay them from our own Treasury.

We negotiated therefore for the territory needed, and paid for it a larger price than would have been given by any other nation in the world.

But the high sense of justice which has always distinguished the United States in her public policies would not permit the despoilment of Mexico.

Regarding her only as entitled to the rights of a public enemy so long as she warred upon the Union, we may confidently maintain that she is entitled at least to as just and magnanimous treatment as the National Government extends to a…

The United States might well have relieved Virginia and have done justice to her creditors by making some allowance for the division of her territory.

The burden was already as heavy as she could bear in her entirety, and dismemberment so crippled her that she could not meet her obligations.

Upon Virginia alone fell the penalty, which if due to any was due to all.

But Texas was allowed to emerge from the contest without the forfeiture of an acre, and Congress, so far from withdrawing the land grants by which other Southern States were to be enriched, took pains to renew them in the years succeeding…