to hold the law for the recovery of fugitive slaves
as of no validity, and to defy its execution.
Such are some of the representations that have
been made in my hearing, and in regard to which, it
has become your duty, as the Grand Inquest of the
District, to make legal inquiry. Personally,
I know nothing of the facts, or the evidence relating
to them. As a member of the Court, before which
the accused persons may hereafter be arraigned and
tried, I have sought to keep my mind altogether
free from any impressions of their guilt or innocence,
and even from an extra-judicial knowledge of the
circumstances which must determine the legal character
of the offence that has thus been perpetrated.
It is due to the great interests of public justice,
no less than to the parties implicated in a criminal
charge, that their cause should be in no wise
and in no degree prejudged. And in referring,
therefore, to the representations which have been
made to me, I have no other object than to point you
to the reasons for my addressing you at this advanced
period of our sessions, and to enable you to apply
with more facility and certainty the principles
and rules of law, which I shall proceed to lay
before you.
If the circumstances, to which I have
adverted, have in fact taken place, they involve
the highest crime known to our laws. Treason
against the United States is defined by the Constitution,
Art. 3, Sec. 3, cl. 1, to consist in “levying
war against them, or adhering to their enemies,
giving them aid and comfort.” This
definition is borrowed from the ancient Law of England,
Stat. 25, Edw. 3, Stat. 5, Chap. 2, and its terms must
be understood, of course, in the sense which they
bore in that law, and which obtained here when
the Constitution was adopted. The expression,
“levying war,” so regarded, embraces not
merely the act of formal or declared war, but
any combination forcibly to prevent or oppose
the execution or enforcement of a provision of
the Constitution, or of a public Statute, if accompanied
or followed by an act of forcible opposition in
pursuance of such combination. This, in substance,
has been the interpretation given to these words
by the English Judges, and it has been uniformly
and fully recognized and adopted in the Courts of the
United States. (See Foster, Hale, and Hawkins,
and the opinions of Iredell, Patterson, Chase,
Marshall, and Washington, J.J., of the Supreme
Court, and of Peters, D.J., in U.S. vs. Vijol,
U.S. vs. Mitchell, U.S. vs. Fries, U.S.
vs. Bollman and Swartwout, and U.S. vs.
Burr).
The definition, as you will observe,
includes two particulars, both of them indispensable
elements of the offence. There must have
been a combination or conspiring together to oppose
the law by force, and some actual force must have
been exerted, or the crime of treason is not consummated.
The highest, or at least the direct proof of the
combination may be found in the declared purposes
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