James Blaine

He believed in the principles of Democracy as he did in a demonstration of Euclid,--all that might be said on the other side was necessarily absurd.

He idolized Jefferson and revered Jackson as embodying in their respective characters all the elements of the soundest political philosophy, and all the requisites of the highest political leadership.

The judicial literature of the English tongue may be sought in vain for finer models than are found in the opinions of Judge Black when he sat, and was worthy to sit, as the associate of John Bannister Gibson, on the Supreme Bench of…

Reading had made him a full man, talking a ready man, writing an exact man.

To this generous store of knowledge he added fluency of speech, both in public address and private communication, and a style of writing which was at once unique, powerful, and attractive.

A sincere Christian, he had been a devout and constant student of the Bible, and could quote its passages and apply its teachings with singular readiness and felicity.

There was not a disputed passage or an obscure reading in any one of the great plays upon which he could not off-hand quote the best renderings, and throw original light from his own illumined mind.

Assured by the language of the President that they could with impunity defy the constitutional authority of the government, the Secessionists were immeasurably encouraged.

Under these doctrines the Government of the United States was shorn of all power to preserve its own existence, and the Union might crumble and fall while its constituted authorities stood paralyzed and impotent.

But in all his arguments he left the State to be the ultimate judge of the constitutionality of the Acts of the Federal Government.

The President recognized the reserved right of revolution in the States, and it was a necessary incident of that right that each State might decide when the right should be exercised.

The President insisted that the injured party should appeal to the aggressor, and then to the courts, with the reserved right of revolution always in view and to be exercised if neither the aggressor nor the courts furnished satisfactory…

The President apparently failed to see that if the Nation could not be preserved by force, its legal capacity for existence was dependent upon the concurring and continuing will of all the individual States.

The fatal admission was thus evolved from the mind of the President, that any State which thought itself aggrieved and could not secure the concessions demanded, might bring the Government down in ruins.

His argument in support of the right at that crisis was prejudicial to the Union, and afforded a standing-ground for many Southern men who were beginning to feel that the doctrine of Secession was illogical, unsafe, untenable.

But he had no right to make such an argument or suggest such an hypothesis, for never in the history of the Federal Government had the decision of the Supreme judicial tribunal been disobeyed or disregarded by any State or by any…

By this declaration the President justified, and in effect advised, an appeal from the constitutional tribunals of the country to a popular judgment in the aggrieved States, and recognized the right of those States, upon such popular…

In that event, the injured States, after having used all peaceful and constitutional means to obtain redress, would be justified in revolutionary resistance to the government of the Union.

Should it be refused, then the Constitution, to which all the States are parties, will have been willfully violated by one portion of them in a provision essential to the domestic security and happiness of the remainder.

Without having the legal right to obstruct the return of a fugitive slave to his servitude, they felt not only that they had the right, but that it was their duty, to protect free citizens in their freedom.

His defensive plea for the North was worse, if worse were possible, than his aggressive statements on behalf of the South.

Buchanan had always looked to the statesmen of the South as a superior class; and after a political life wholly spent in close association and constant service with them, it could not be expected that, even in a crisis threatening…

The quiet manner in which the North accepted this inequitable distribution of political power added only another proof of the complete ascendency which the South had acquired in the councils of the Democratic party.

It was hardly less than audacious that the four departments assigned to the South should be those which dealt most intimately and most extensively with the finances, the manufactures, and the commerce of the country.

It seemed extraordinary that out of seven Cabinet officers four should be given to the South, when the North had a vast preponderance of population and wealth.