The South, meanwhile, had been encouraged in the work of secession by thousands of Democrats who did not desire or look for the dissolution of the Union, but wished to plot of secession to go far enough, and the danger to the Union to…
James Blaine
The Public Record
James Gillespie Blaine was an American statesman and Republican politician who represented Maine in the United States House of Representatives from 1863 to 1876, served as Speaker of the House from 1869 to 1875, and was a United States senator from 1876 to 1881. He served twice as Secretary of State, under presidents James A. Garfield and Chester A. Arthur in 1881, and under Benjamin Harrison from 1889 to 1892. He sought the Republican presidential nomination in 1876 and 1880, and received the nomination in 1884, narrowly losing the general election to Democratic nominee Grover Cleveland. Blaine was a prominent figure in the moderate faction of the Republican Party, known as the "Half-Breeds".
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Meetings to save the Union upon the basis of surrender of principle were held throughout the free States, while a word of manly resistance to the aggressive disposition of the South, or in re-affirmation of principles so long contended…
Disunion, which had been so much threatened and so little executed, seemed now to the vision of the multitude an accomplished fact,--a fact which inspired a large majority of the Northern people with a sentiment of terror, and imparted to…
It would be unjust to the senators and representatives in Congress to leave the impression that their unavailing efforts at conciliating the South were any thing more or less than a compliance with a popular demand which overspread the…
Douglas rarely had a debate with either in which he did not lose his temper, and to lose one's temper in debate is generally to lose one's cause.
The whole controversy over the Territories, as remarked by a witty representative from the South, related to an imaginary negro in an impossible place.
They were not to be deluded now by a nominal equality of rights in Territories where, in a long contest for supremacy, they were sure to be outnumbered, outvoted, and finally excluded by organic enactment.
The Republicans no more clearly perceived that they risked nothing on the question of slavery in organizing those Territories without restriction, than the Southern leaders perceived that they would gain nothing by it.
If receding from the anti-slavery creed of the Republican party was intended as a conciliation to the South, the men who made the movement ought to have seen that it would prove ineffectual.
A surrender of the principle with due explanation of the reasons, properly recorded for the instruction of those who should come after, would have left the Republican party in far better position than did the precipitate retreat which they…
It cannot be denied that this action of the Republican party was a severe reflection upon that prolonged agitation for prohibition of slavery in the Territories by Congressional enactment.
He was justified in his boast that, after all the bitter agitation which followed the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Bill, the Republicans adopted his principle and practically applied its provisions in the first Territory which they had…
Beyond doubt, if the Territory of Kansas required a prohibition against slavery, the Territory of Colorado and the Territory of Nevada, which lay as far south, needed it also.
Surely, if an anti-slavery restriction were needed for Oregon, it was needed for Dakota which lay in the same latitude.
When the Missouri Compromise was repealed, and the Territories of the United States north of the line of 36 deg. 30' were left without slavery inhibition or restriction, the agitation began which ended in the overthrow of the Democratic…
It was matter of congratulation with Republicans who did not lose their judgment in that trying season, that the Senate stood firmly against the fatal compromise which was urged by so many strong influences.
It would have opened anew the old struggle for equality between free States and slave States, and would in all probability have led the country to war within three years from its adoption,--war with Mexico for the border States of that…
This offered a premium upon the acquisition of territory, and was an encouragement to schemes of aggression against friendly powers south of the United States, which would always have had the sympathy and support of one-half the Union, and…
Perhaps the most vicious feature in this whole series of proposed amendments to the Constitution was the guaranty of slavery against the power of Congress in all territory of the United States south of 36 deg. 30'.
They dealt wholly in the finding of new guaranties for slavery, without attempting to intimate the possible necessity of new guaranties for freedom.
They were of a character not to be entertained by a free people.
They regarded the discontent and hostility in the South as without just cause, and intimated that those States might purchase at a high price some valuable information to be learned only in the school of experience.
They vindicated the conduct of the General Government, and showed that the Union was not to be preserved by compromises nor by sacrifice of principle.
Whether Texas was constitutionally or unconstitutionally annexed to the Union was no more to be decided by Massachusetts than the constitutionality of the prohibition of Slavery north of the Missouri line was to be decided by South…
If Massachusetts reserved to herself the right to determine the sense in which she understood her accession to the compact of the Federal Government, she gave full warrant to South Carolina to determine for herself the sense of the compact…
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