The nobles of Poland who dictated the policy of the kingdom were as numerous in proportion to the whole population as the rich class of slave-holders whose decrees governed the policy of their States.
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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No President of any party had ever been elected who was opposed to its supremacy.
The political revolution of 1860 had given to the Republic an anti-slavery President, and the Southern men refused to accept the result.
They had been too long accustomed to power to surrender it to an adverse majority, however lawful or constitutional that majority might be.
They had been trained to lead and not to follow.
They had been so long in command that they had become incapable of obedience.
Unwillingness to submit to Constitutional authority was the controlling consideration which drove the Southern States to the desperate design of a revolution, peaceful they hoped it would be, but to a revolution even if it should be one of…
If the wild precipitation of the Southern leaders must be condemned, the compromising course of the majority in each branch of Congress will not escape censure,--censure for misjudgment, not for wrong intention.
The anxiety in both Senate and House to do something which should allay the excitement in the slave-holding section served only to develop and increase its exasperation and its resolution.
Every form of compromise which could be suggested, every concession of Northern prejudice and every surrender of Northern pride, was urged upon the committee.
But the plea carried with it a national guaranty and protection of slavery on the southern side of the line, and its effect would inevitably have been in a few years to divide the Republic from ocean to ocean.
We offer to settle the question finally in all of the present territory that you claim, by giving you every chance of establishing Slavery that you have any right to require of us.
Why require protection where you will have nothing to protect? . . .
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…
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…
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.
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 were of a character not to be entertained by a free people.
They dealt wholly in the finding of new guaranties for slavery, without attempting to intimate the possible necessity of new guaranties for freedom.
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'.
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…
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…
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.
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…
Surely, if an anti-slavery restriction were needed for Oregon, it was needed for Dakota which lay in the same latitude.
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